Gattinara On Lucretius and Bacon On The Atoms

LUCRETIUS AND BACON
EROS AND THE ATOMS
Eugenio Gattinara
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate
Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of

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the requirements for the degree of Master of
Arts
Department of English
McGill University
Montreal - Canada August, 1973
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
,-/v ABSTRACT
! Bacon's atomism is usually seen as a mere repetition of

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(8reek atomism, marking the beginning of the modern scientific age, -

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and as a philosophical position which the founder of the inductive
method could hardly avoid taking. Consequently little attention

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has been paid to the nature Itself of Bacon's atomism which, however,
on account of the concept of force which it contains, goes beyohd
Democritean and Epicurean physics'. This concept appears in Bacon's
De Principiis atque Originibus symbolized by Cupid, and brings
Bacon much closer to the atomism of Lucretius than to that of the
Greek philosophers. Lucretius' universe, in fact, is more than a
mere conglomeration of atoms: it is a domain ruled ,by the power of
Venus and Eros. HoweveT, the similarities between the atomic systems
of the two, philosophers can be made manifest only if Lucretius'
Venus is seen in her relation to the atoms.
ABREGE
Souvent on regarde l'atomisme de Bacon'comme une repetitiqtf

s
de l'atomleme grec qui marque le debut de l'&ge moderne sclentifique,
et comme une pOBltjLon philosophique que le fondateur de la methods
inductive ne pouvait pas eviter. Par consequent, on s'est occupe

»>
trSs peu de la nature mSme de l'atomisme de Bacon, qui, pourtant,
tenant compte de l'idee de force qu'il contient, va plus loin que
la physique de Democrite et d'Epicure. Cette idee eet syrabolis6e
|>ar Cupidon dans- le De Principiis atque Originlbus. et rapproche
Bacon i. l'atomleme de Lucrdce plus qu'A celui dee philosophes
grecs. En effet, l'univers de Lucrlce est plus qu'une simple

•
conglomeration d'atomes: i! est un domains gouverne par Venus
et Eros. Pourtant, les similarites entre les syst^mes atomiques
desjieux ^philosophes peuvent se manifeeter seulement si la V6nus

-
. de Lucrdce est reconnue danp sa.,relation avec les atomes.
CONTENTS
page
Introduction 1
Chapter I 6
20
Chapter II
Chapter III 48
Notes 78
Bibliography 88
INTRODUCTION c
* ■ .
One method of treating Lucretius, both in relation to his debt
to earlier philosophies an^l in ter ins of his influence on later
writers, hah been extensively employed; "this is to refer to him as
to the most "complete" or at least most "legible" embodiment of 1

o
atomism; "complete" on 'account of the fragmentary nature of the pre-
Socratic atomists and'of the works of Epicurus himself, "legible"
o’n account of the stylistic and poetic merits of De Rerum Katura,
whi\:h, furthermore, being written in, Latin, has always beeh more
accessible than lie Greek models. HoWever, this privileged
position held by Lucretius among scholars of all ages has had some
detrimental consequences. The pleasant.shortcut to atomism offered

, I. ,
by De I Reruifi Natura has in fact brought
f most readers to regard it
almost solely as a systematic and lyrical exposition of the thought
of Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus, in whose writings atomism

„ * ©
suffered from the dryness common to most philosophic treatises,
an attitude which has led to a general lack of responsiveness to

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the originality of Lucretius’ thought. In fact, even though many

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scholars have focused their attention on "the stylistic peculiarities
and poetic skill of Lucretius, few have concerned themselves with
the extent to which his philosophy deviated from its Democritean
Archetype and from its closer Epicurean^model. Pierre Boyanc6, -
the author of Lucrdce et 1 1epicurisms, best illustrates the former
group of scholars. He recognizes that Lucretius has.not limited
himself to following faithfully the philosophy of Epicurus, rather,
"il I'a repens6e avaQ^profondeur, en l'ordonnant dans le cadre de
\
\
\
' • ‘ \
see Chants et il l'a animAe, par 1'expression, dq toute*son ardour
b
de persuasion, de seduction, de conquSte splrituelle."^" However,

i *
Boyance sees in Lucretius only a decorator of the furniture df
the Epicurean universe. After saying, "S'il y a une originalite

* y
** *
dans la |physique de LucrAce, elle ne .consists pas A introduire
des theories nouvelles," he adds, "II n'y a pas entre Epicure et lui
rien qui rappelle l'ecart qui separe Epicure de Democrite" (p. 3),
*
and that "L*originalite la plu6 profonde de LucrAce est . . .

✓
d'avoir parlA de 1'ApiChrisme en termes de poAsie" (p. if).
This position, maintained, as I have said, by most Lucretlan

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scholars, finds its roots already among ancient critics and appraisers
of Lucretius • work and is best epitomisî by Quintilian, io places
Lucretius among those writers who "praecepta sapientiae versibus

p
tradiderunt" (Quint. Instit. Orat. I,if,if), and whose merit is
' mainly that of having made Epicurus' doctrines more acceptable
by translating them into verse.^ Quintilian here quotes part of
that famous passage of Lucretius that has probably been the most
influential -in leading critics to view Lucretius as a mere versifier
and sweetener of Epicurean philoedphy:
Sed veluti pueris absinthia taetra medentes

cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum
contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquors,
'ut puer.orum aeias improvida ludificetur
labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum
absinthi laticem deceptaque non capiatur,
sed potius tali pacto recreata valescat,
sic ego nunc, quoniam haec ratio plerumque vldetur
tristior eSse quibus non est tractate, retroque
volgus abhorret ab hac, volui tibl suaviloquenti
J carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram
et qfih&i musaeo dulci contlngere melle,
si tibl forte animum tall ratione tenere
* versibus in jaostris possem, dum perspicis oonem
naturam rerun qua constet compta figura.
♦ (Lucretius, De Rerun Natura, I, 936-950 )**
* *
Perhaps the only scholar who has contributed in any substantial
way toân understanding of Lucretius* original, thought, is Luciano
Perelli, who in his book. Lucrefeio poeta .dell 'angoscia. a recently

V ,
published book, succeeds in showing how pe Rerum Natura frequently
betrays symptoms of a mind working independently of Epicurean
influences and reaching conclusions in no way traceable to either
Epicurean or atomistic philosophy. (I shall not go into any
details about Perelli's #©rk now, sinoe some of his observations
will have a chance to appear inlhs^ course of my work.) However,
due to the fact that his work has bee republished very recently, his
views concerning the originality of Lucretius^have^not had time

\ to be known and digested outside of the circle of purely^ Lucretian
scholars and, therefore, have not yet met with any consideration
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and interest on the part of those (still few in number) who concern^
0
themselves with the influence of tho Latin master on later ages.
We are thus confronted today with d number of works (maijily
short articles) on the "fortuna" of Lucretius in the Middle Ages,

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the Renaissance and later periods, which either stress the posthumous
survival of Lucretian imagery and expressions in post-Lucretian
literature, or comment on the revival of certain philosophical
doctrines, e.g. the atomic theory and the concept of "voluptas".
Writers stressing the latter Ooften use the De Rerun Natura as an

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easy way to refer to pre-Socratic atomic physics and Epicurean
ethics. Moreover, it is interesting to note that while those
critical writings concerned with Lucretius' poetry concentrate

<0
mainly on the period between Lucretius and the end of the Middle
>• • .
Ages, a period concerndd especially with stylistica! disquisitions and
philological studies, those centered around ;he ethical and
philosophical issues in Lucretius find a nor/e fertile soil in the
period immediately following, in the Renaissance, and occasionally
in later centuries. This trend reflected in works that compare
Lucretius to other authors is easily seen b|y a perusal of ai|y

5
bibliography of Lucretian studies,. But when we come to these latter
writings, Lucretius qua Lucretius tends to disappear, to give place
to a Lucretian Epicurus combining the atomistic theories of
Democritus and Leucippus with the doctrine of "voluptas" proper
to Epicurus himself, and with the poetical Nsuaviloquens carmen"

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of Lucretius. This ,presumably involuntary creation of a Lucretian
Epicurus prevents a clear understanding of Lucretius and of his
influence.
Since it is my intention in the present study to bring together
the thought of Lucretius and that of q^n English thinker of the
Renaissance, namely Francis Bacon, it is essential, then, that x
whatever is strictly Lucretian in De Rerum Natura be isolated from
its more generally Epicurean and atomistic context. Consequently,
little will be said about the atomism of NBacon in its relation to

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Democritus' and Epicurus' atomism, but, on the„ otl^r hand, considerable
attention will be paid to certain peculiar aspects of Lucretius' atomic
Weltanschauung fhich find a strikingly similar expression within
the pages of Bacon.
Because so much hv
as been written about Bacon's own atomism,
I will confine myself to giving as clear a synopsis as possible
of the problems presented by it, and a brief summary of the famous
Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
quarrel otfer ,the extentôf Bacdn‘'s acceptance .of atomism, as* well
as a list Of basic worksôn the'subject.
The primary aim of tViis .study^ I s f then, to show that the
philosophy of Francis Bacofr; especially in one particular period
of his intellectual developra&nt, manifests the presence o f .influences

*
which are Lucretian rather than Epicurean in nature, and that most
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of the scholars who hkv'k dealt with.the atoqjism of Bacon have been
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so engrossed in the Epicurean and Democritean contents of’ De RerUm,
Natura that they have lost .sight not only of those element^ irf
»
Lucretius which are not Epicurean (a lapsus’oculi which, - we have

a
Seen, has been rather common among Lucretian scholars) but also
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of those ideas in Bacon ^nich most clearly witness a deviation
from the theories of the original atomists.
Obviously, in order to make the differences between Epicurus
and Lucretius clear, it is necessary to review briefly* the history
Of atomism in terms of its genesis and growth. This history will
fo?ln the first chapter of the present-work and toill aim at showing
what precisely Lucretius contributed to traditional atomism. ?
_£HAPTES. I
DEMOCRITUS /'* ' *
\ *
We owe the great merit of having destroyed the static Universe
of the Parmenidean school ^to Leucippus and Democritus. With its
'belief in, motionless Being, the Parmenidean school had denied
plurality and any creative process of coming-into-'being, and

•jfi I
consequently, had taken a position which was hardly compatible
with any empirical and realistic view of the universe. .The Impasse
that resulted from the Parmenidean philosophy and, from the mathematical
and logical abstractions of Pythagoras and Zeno necessitated a

>
total reorganization of the Universe in terms of principles
which, even if not perceivable in themselves, could find proof
for their existence in the observation of Nature herself and

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no longer in vague abstractions and logical formulations. .
Leucippus and Democritus brought about this reorganization.
Little is known about Leucippus, but since the little’we
know of his philosophy is repeated and developed by Democritus,
we may safely refer to the early atomism simply in terms of

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Democritean philosophy.
i
Demotfritus' theory consisted in the vision of a Universe
whose elemental particles and'basic substance were atoms,
imperceptibly small bodies (Kirk and Raven, fr. 555)*1 compact
and full (Kirk and Raven, fr. 546), moving in space. In order
to account for the motion of these small particles of matter,

a ’
Democritus postulated the existence of void, which, by allowing
the atoms to come together, permitted the creation of more or leas
complex* atomic combinations, so that "by their c.oming together they
effect coming-into-being, by their separation perishing" (Kirk and
Raven, fr. 552).
This subdivision of the Universe in terms of %toms and void,

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matter and space, can be seen as a development of the Parmenidean*
distinction between Being and Not Being; however, it is perhaps
more realistic to see atomism and its materialism as a rebellion
against the Parmenidean flights of imagination, and t h ^ v o i d as
a necessary consequence of atoms in motion, rather than as jsc^
philosophical reformulation of the concept of Not Being.
Democritus mentioned size and shape as the only two properties
of the .atoms (kirk and Raven, fr. 5 7 k ) , which therefore, on account \

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of their lack of weight, are left floating in the void with,
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apparently, no way of coming together. Epicurus later added
weight to the properties of the atom, creating, as we. shall see,
new difficulties; but for the time being, Democritus is left with
the problem of accounting for the creation o$ m a t t e r through the
coming together of “atoms. How do the atoms move," if there is no
v/eight to'give them a gravitational vector or some otjher kind of
direction? And how do they come together if they are floating in
a space which is infinite? (Kirk and Raven, fr. 562) Democritus

o
says that the atoms move "by mutual collisions*and blo*6'f (Kirk
and Raven, fr. 579) and, in order %o “anticipate any objection,
such as Aristotle's, to the effect that he "ought to specify What -

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a
kind of motion . . . is natural to them" (Kirk and Raven, fr. 576),
$<■
i
Democrit-us states that the first principles “of the Universe are
brought together in mutual collisions by a force which he calls

ft
the "whirl" (<£W^) (Kirk and Raven, fr. 562)^'
The nature of the "whirl" or vortex is unknown, and it is
certainly a rather baffling and unprecedented conce-pt; however,
a fragment quoted by Diogenes Laertius attempts to clarify it by

i
tk«r
for the cause of the cdming-into-being of all things
is the whirl, which he QtemocritusJ calls necessity" (Kirk and
Raven, fr. 565).
But in order that the idea of necessity may clarify what
the whirl is, the term oCV'W^K^must be. clearly related to the
term The different interpretations of their relationship
make almost impossible any clear understanding of hou Democritus
conceived it. In the passage just quoted, Diogenes Laertius
makes the whirl and necessity synonymous with each other, but
Aristotle seems to see Democritus' "necessity" as syftonymous with
chance or self-imposed movement, not identical with the whirl
but rather its direct cause (Kirk and Raven, fr. 567). Simplicius,
in agreement with Aristotle but less dogmatic, says that Democritus

-I ®
"seems to generate it L th0 whirlj by accident or chance" (Kirk
and Raven, fr. 570).

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Kirk and Raven seem td consider the fragment of Diogenes
Laertius as the most reliable, and therefore cqnsider the.word
"necessity", rather than the word "chance", as the term originally
used by Democritus. Consequently, they explain Aristotle's - 40

\
replacement of the word "necessity" by the word "chance" ( T o
t '
&oToyu<*<bvfl by saying that "In Aristotelian terms, combinations can
be said to take place by .chance. . . . For Aristotle they ^re chance
events because they do not fulfil any final cause; but the atomists
emphasized the other aspect of non-planned mechanical sequence,
I.e. as necessity" (Kirk and Raven, p. 413).
Taking "chance" as the Aristotelian equivalent of Democritus'
"necessity" does not, however, clarify the relationship existing
between this force called "necessity" and that designated as "the
whirl". Is the former synonymous with the latter, as Diogenes
Laertius' fragment implies, or is one the cause of, the motive
power behind the other, as Aristotle and Simplicius claim? The
problem has not yet been solved, but whatever the function of
o
necessity may be, it helps explain the idea of the whirl— if not
• * ,
by giving it the consistency of a physical phenomenon, at least
by placing it within an historical context. For if the idea of

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the whirl is new, that of necessity is not, and can be traced
back not only to its more mythological formulators, such as Homer
and Hesiod, but also to Ionian science, more specifically to
Anaximander who, at the end of his famous passage on the "Indefinite"

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(To o(it€\ôv) says that "the source of coming-to-be for existing *
things is that into which destruction, too, happens according to
necessi_ty|go<ri To u^j'(Kirk and Raven, fr. 103). In the li;ght •
of this ancestor of Dem&ritus' "necessity", we can perhaps see
the atomist's "whirl" as an attempt to materialize the already
existing idea ofixVo^'O^by giving it a mdre definite, visual motion,
a vector as it were. Thus, Diogenes Laertius' fragment concerning

o
the identification of thh whirl with necessity becomes indered more
Reliable and clearer than Aristotle's or Simplicius' interpretation
in thatît makes the whirl into the "field" of the force of Necessity
and therefore comes very close to an extremely modern conception of/
force.
Thus we liave
Jiave in Democritean physics- a universe made up of atoms
and void, a void which, however, cannot be completely empty, since

1v -
it is the sphere of action of the whirl and/or necessity, a force
(or forces) which cannot reside in the atoms which are, by definition
"indivisible . . . and impassible owing to their compactness, and
without any void in them" (Kirk and Raven, fr. 556).
EPICURUS
It is obvious that with Epicures, philosophy has dealt a
violent blow tp Platonism. Epicuims' return to nature and empirical
observation was a clear refutation of Plato's, world of Ideas and

> «
of his apotheosis of Reason.-/However, Epicurus' opposition to
/ • -
Plato' confined itself to a reformulation of Ionian-science, and
/ •/
did not manifest itself* too conspicuously in his general thought.
N. W. DeWitt says of Epicurus that Platonism was "among
his chief abominations1/ (Epicurus and His Philosophy, p.6),^
yet it is necessary to recognize in Epicujceanism a philosophy

' i
that, though not consciously indebted to Plato, could not have
/ .
existed without the. intellectual revolution he* brought about.
This revolution /nad made ma n less aware of the Universe that

* ' '
surrounded hiny and more concerned with the position he held in it, .
and Plato's Appearance probably has been as important and

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influential .for the study of the T T o X i r i k o V as was Auguste
Comte's in the nineteenth century.
Epicurus, in fact, was no longer concerned with studying nature
for its own sake in/the fashion of the Pre-Socratics, but only in
60 far as it might (bring-happiness to human beings. Knowledge
and science had x r x vd, peace of-mind, as their main aim (Diogenes
Laertius, Lives Of Eminent Philosophers. X, 8 5 c a n d they have to

ci \ /___ , L
be pursued only •• TTô^ To KdCt ^<*.Ko^toV V
d'uVT£\Vtv11 (Diog. Laert., X, 80a).**
Thus, where in Leucippus and Democritus the atom accounted for
first causes, in Epicurus it became a tool of ethics, the basis' for

r '
categorical imperatives, the justification for a teleological
philosophy, and consequently an aid to the investigation of final
causes. Moreover, this ideological difference between Democritean
and Epicurean physics, manifested by the*presence in Epicurus' work
of ethical preoccupations which are absent in that of Democritus,
extends to the properties and qualifications of the atom itself.
In his doctoral dissertation on the^ differences between, the

. ' */
Democritean and Epicurean philosophies of .nature, Karl Marx complains
df the fact that "modern writers j>y and large make Epicurus a mere
plagiarist of Democritus in regard to the philosophy of nature."

I
Leibniz, Marx says, had expressed a similar opinion by s t a t i ng<
that "of thie great man (Democritus) we scarcely know what EpicuruB
has borrowed from him, who was not capable of always taking the v
J
best" (The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean
Philosophy of Nature, p. 6 ^ - 7 ) ^
i
However, althpugh Marx, too, aims at proving the essential
i
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12
difference between the two forms of atomism, he does ‘not seem to
see that the difference can be noticed already in the constitution.
of their^riirciT)lre-Taleine^t(^ which he erroneously considers
'•‘undeniably the same" (Marx, p. 67) • But~lRiff%<=4ojes^Marx mean when
he says that they are "undeniably the same"? His coampnt CouJtl-
mean either of two things : that both Democritus and Epicurus
agreed on having their universe formed by<two main principles,
atoms and void, or — taking this interpretatldhôr granted — *

o ' \
that both Epicurus' and Democritus' two principles have the same
attributes and functions. In either.case, Karx's statement is
inaccurate . If we accept the first interpretation, Marx's statement
can be partially refuted by the fact that Democritus never says
that the unJCverê is made up only of atoms and void — he thus

i
allows for the existence of his "whirl"; while Epicurus, in-contrast,
dogmatically states: " < o TTdV £<3'Ti. d'tO K«<\, I ( D i o g .

6
Laert., X, 39b), and deprives the-universe of any force or motive
energy. In order to assess the validity of the- secpnd interpretation,

£>
however, we must look further and determine whether the atom and"1
the void of Democritus are really the same as those of Epicurus,.

4
and if they are not, what the differences between the two conceptions
p —
imply.
Both Democritus and Epicurus believed in the existence of
two basic" principles, the one solid and full, the other rare and
empty. Moreover, they both believed‘in the indivisibility of the
atom, even if the farmer considers sdallness and— the-lattsr hardness
the cause of this indivisibility (Kirlt and Raven, fr. 537). But
at this point feSe similarities between the two philosophers end, and'
* \ *
.,J>
~'Vni
‘.•tfULjA*
3
13
*
their views of- the atom become irreconcilable; for while Democritus,
■ on one hand, names only two properties of the atom — size a,nd
\ ' shape (Kirk and Raven, fr. 574) — Epicurus adds weight, or mass
and KaVen» fr* 574; Diog. Laert.j X, 54a>.
Epicurus' introduction of weight is of fundamental importance;
the concept of weight leads us to.an understanding of the basic
difference between Democritus and Epicurus, namely, the latter's
omission of any concept of force such as we have discovered in
the philosophy of Democritus. But in order that we may account
for this third property attributed to the atom, a few words must
be said on Epicufus' opinions concerning Necessity and the gods.
Atomism is used by Epicdrus bo prove the absurdity of a
belief in immortality and in anything divine. Everything is made
up of atoms,", every form of matter thus constituted is mortal
except the atom itself, which lasts forever and seeks new
combinations out of the old ones. The atom is in no way subject
to any divine power. The gods do exist, Epicurus allows, but
they have nothing to do with the- structure and motions of the
universe (Diog. .Laert., X, $7a). They have no duties, nothing

f
moves them and nothing]is moved, by thenji (Diog. Laert., X, 97a * 139)«
I
It is obvious, then, that Epicurus' gods, by virtue of their
- powerlessness, do not really exist, since .the concept of God
has a^nbaning only If power is attributed to it.
But Epicurus'is not satisfied with having crippled the
existing theogony; he knows that the gods are only puppets or

t
at best symbols of a force, since time immemorial recognised
by man as arbiter of human life and of uniybrfal phenomena. r
This force is Necessity. It is probably for this, /eason that
Epicurus deems it unnecessary to deny completely the existence /
of the gods (a denial that, furthermore^might have compromised,

^ ' C)
his position in the state, and made his philosophy even harder v
-/ • ‘
for people to accept) and instead sets about showing that "Necessity"
/ /
is a pious fiction. / /
In the Odyssey. Athena says that not even the gods can save
man from his fate (Moira) (3. 228). In the Iliad, the gods
/
themselves admit that their powers are*limited compared to those
of Necessity (13. 117). In Hesiod's Theogony we hear that the Moirai

/
and the avenging Fates bring punishment to both raen and gods for
their trangressions (220), while Aeschylus* Prometheus declares

J
that Zeus himself is subject to the decrees of -Necessity (Prometheus
r *
Bound, v. 520 ffj.
Epicurus probably would not have taken arms against the

/
idea of Necessity if it had been only the product of a mythical
mind; he realized,, however, rfthat the idea had played an important

> - A.
role not only in the scientific philosophy of Anaximander but,
as we have already seen,.had also become the first mover of the
Democritean atomic universe. Consequently, understanding that
the existence of atoms did not necessarily-eliminate the possibility
of a divine or metaphysical agent, he formulated his famous attack
bn Necessity in his letter to Kenoeceus. "Destiny," he says,
"which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he [the wise manjj
laughs to scorn, affirming that some things happen by nebessity,
others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that
necessity destroys responsibility and that chance or fortune is
/
i
15
i
constant; whereas our own actions are free, and it is to then that '
I praise and b ^ m e naturally attach. It were betjter, indeed, to

* •
accept the legends of the gods than to bow j£nepth that yoke of
destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed" (Di-og.LaertSy'

7
X, 13j$b).f In this passage, by doing away with Necessity, Epicurus
unfortunately shows an eagerness that can hardly be called

J \ *
philosophical. At this point he h<Sis ceased to be a serious thinker
in search of natural causes, ana has become a wishful thinker, v

* t
* t %
whose aim is to reftjê the "natural philosophers"' belief in
Necessity (among whom we recognize Anaximander and Democritus)
and to give man freedom and independence frou the divine will. He
does not explain On what grounds he demolishes Necessity': we may

a
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consider his "swerving" atom, endowed 'with free-will, tfie cause
o"f this liberum arbitrium in man. But,, as we shall see later, the
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anomalous behaviour of the atom is not really the cause of human
freedom but rather the necessary consequence of having deprived the
universe of a moving force. However, Epicurus had to pay for his°
glmost religious zeal. If Necessity does not exist and if no other /
'Torce— is_found, how are we to account for the motj^m ofxthe'atoms?
Why do they move? Who or what moves ~themT We-aay-excuse him for
not knowing how the atoms and void were created, although he attempts
XN
to give an explanation when,he unsatisfactorily says that atoms
and void always existed (Diog. Laert., X, k k c ) S ' Yet to dismiss
the issue concerning their movement by a similar explanation
would mean giving a very weak basis^to- his refutation of Democritus'
theory. Consequently, Epicurus explains that the motion of the
atoms is vertical and perpendicular (Diog. Laert., X, and that
16
weight carries them down through infinite spad# (Diog.'laert.,
X, 54a). weight is introduced as a partial substitute for Necessity.
Karl Marx, in his doctoral dissertation, seems to believe that

/ *
all that Epicurus added to Democritean atoms, in terms of their
i
motion, is the idea of •'swerve1’. He says that "Epicurus assumes
-fil * \
a threefold motion of the atoms in the void. One motion is that
\ of a fall in a straight line, the second comes from the atom deviating
»» ‘
^ from a straight line, and the third is established through the
repulsion of the many atoms. The assumption of the firet and last
Democritus has in common with Epicurus; the declination of the
atom from the straight line differentiates them" (Marx, p. 77).

✓
However, here Marx has made a serious-TffTfetake, for not only is
there no mention in Leucippus ana Demo.critus of the perpendicular
downward fall of the atoms, which according to them move /
\ "<iXX^\orwirooS'o<^ K tk\. <£05 (Kirk and
Haven, fr. 5 7 9 ) but Cicero too, in his De Finlbus Bonorum et
Malorum. often quoted by-Harx himself, says that both the

a -
perpendicular downward fall of the atoms and their weight a r a y ^
, innovations peculiar to Epicurus (I, vi, 18). Then, too, D e m o c r i t u ^
whirl does not require a concept of weight and of fall through
space to account for the movements of the atoms; furthermore,
the motion of t.the whirl is hardly reconcilable with downward
motion. ^
Marx's incorrect statement, however, has given us a means

r 0
of realizing the extent of the revolution brought about by
Epicurus to the atomic theory, a revolution which is not singly

/
limited to jhe appearance of the swerve, but is based on a whole
i-.
17
philosophical machination which >>egins with the addition of weight
as property of the atom, develops inevitably into the concept of
downward motion and, as we shall see a p w . ends with the invention
of the atomic declination. ^
'Weight, as we have seen, was introduced by Epicurus in order
to account .for the motion o£ the atom once it had been released
from the bonds o f Democritean Necessity, but Epicurus himself
realizes that he is far from having solved the problem of its 1
motion. If the atoms only move in straight vertical lines and
if thqypossess equal velocity, as he clearly states in his letter
to Herodotus (Diog. Laert., X, 6la), how will they ever meet and .
bring about those collisions required for the creation of matter? .
(Cicero, De Finibus. I,vi,19) ^ Epicurus hints at the possibility
of a swerve taking place during the downward fall of the atom.
He says that some of the atoms " cLoXoo To\/' 00 4 i V «
(Diog. Laert., X, 4 3 c ) . T h e mention of an anomalous behaviour -
on the part of the atom occurs only once among the works of
Epicurus that have come do,wn to us, and no explanation is given

' ■***
of it anywhere in his works. V,'e m ay qall the "Tfia \ j i o
"oscillation", "quivering", nr "swerve"; but whichever word we
may use to translate the Greek term, it remains clear that
according to Epicurus, at a certain point of. its downward course,
the atom stops — as the word " x G ^ o o f x V " seems to imply —
and begins to quiver, both forms of behaviour beiqg in complete

» *
contradiction with the account of the atomic motion given by
Epicurus in his letter to Herodotus, where he says that any
motion other than perpendicular is due either to collision with
■ . - \ (
\,
\
other atoms or to the reaction produced by the weight of the atom
counteracting the force of the collision (Diog* Laert., X, 61c).

t * tl
However, a con^lete account of the swerve is found in
Lucretius, who either develops the short and vague statement of
Epicurus with his own understanding of it or bases his description •

r_ *
of the phenomenon on some longer passage of Epicurus which has not
come down to us. Lucretiub says that,
corpora cum deorsum rectum per inane feruntur

ponaeribus propriis, incerto tempore ferme
incertisque locis spatio se pellore paulum
tantum quod raomen mutaturn dicere possis.
quod nisi declinare solerent, omnia debrsum,
imbris uti guttae, caderent per inane profundum,
nec foret offensus natus nec plaga creata
prihcipiis: ita nil umquam natura creasset.
(De Rer. Wat.. II, 216-224)
Cicero, probably basing himself on Lucretius' account rather
than on Epicurus', justly realizes the artificiality of this non-
Democritean theory, which he calls "res flcta pueriliter" and
"ad libidinera", that is, an infantile arbitrary invention, since w
Epicurus himself "ait enira declinare atomura sine causa, quo nihil
turpius physico quam fieri quldquam sine causa dicere"{De Finlbus.

1*2 ' * .,
M,vi, 1 9 ) , this being especially true of Epicurus, whose
philosophical axiom was " ouSTeV yzVeTofi 4.V <o\} oVfoû
p(Diog. Laert., X, 3 8 0 ) . ^
Cicero's criticism of Epicurus* atomic theory is instrumental
in destroying the concejstionôf Epicurus as "mere plagiarist of
Democritus"; nevertheless, unfortunately, Cicero does not see that
the contrast between the two philosophers dobaîot consist* simply
in a technical question involving a more or less adequate explanatic

\ ' »
of the beloaviour of the atom b\*t in an altogether different approach
to natural philosophy. Both Democritus and Epicurus;, according to
Cicero, discuss the structure of the universe only in terms of its
material components, omitting to consider "vim et causam efficiendi",'
, 1. the question of "force and of efficient cause (I,vi,l8 ). ' •
-t • It is certainly true that neither of the two atomiets Is as

, ,v ' v ' * I
*
conscious of force as he is'of matter/ but we must, nevertheless1,
\
<> ,
*
recognize that Democritus' "whirl" and his "-Necessity" are by no

■
>
)
meîns superficial oromissible contributions to kinetic physics
v - - &
and that nothing in any way similar Is to be found in Epicurus.
\ . t
The latter's theory of atomic declination c.an in no way accbunt ••
\ for the presence of force, but, as we have seen, -only for an ethical
\ or existential belief in-freedom and. atheism'. With Epicurus, for

\ , “ ' •
the first time probably in the history of Greek, natural philosophy,

« *4
we tyave a vision of the univer.se which does not include an even
simplistic notion of moving force. Socrates and Plato and the
inf-iuence of their ethical philosophy are probably to be blamed
for thi6 serious lacuna in Epicurus' thought. It will be Lucretius,
two centuries later, who will fill it, if hot through sheer power
of analysis and observation, certainly by means of a highly fertile
imagination. The next chapter will try to show its fruit's.
20
CHAPTER II
In The Philosophy of Poetry, a short work on the relationship
between form and content in Lucretius’ poem, Henri Bergson touches
on what is probably the most striking difference between Epicurus

f
and Lucretius. He says:

o
Lucretius was struck by the part of Democritus'"theory

treated lightly by Epicurus: the absolute rigidity of
*• - the laws of nature. Everything consists and has always
consisted solely of atoms, masses of atoms, and changes
in the arrangement of atoms; atoms move on, eternally
- and inexorably; definite, changeless laws must govern
the birth, growth and decay of things caught up and
squeezed from every direction by the tight bond of
necessity. And inspired by what he assumes to be the
basic idea of Epicureanism, Lucretius discovers that
while natural phenomena appear to follow no set plan,
their infinity variety actually masks the movement of
atoms in predetermined directions and the uniform
force of immutable laws (P. 79).^"
C o
Epicurus, as we have seen, considered the study of natural
philosophy only a means to achieve nappiness and tranquillity.
His physics was crude and fell short of explaining adequately

4 J
. the mechanism of t&e universe. Lucretius', too, we may say,
expounded ethical doctrines clearly formed upon the Epicurean
model. However, De Rerum Natura represents a violent departure

** o
from Epicdrean philosophy in that its physics shows a wholly
unepicurean preoccupation with the concemfÔ* force, determinism
and Necessity, which Epicurus had so eagerly rejected; and its

9
ethics witnesses the transformation brought about by Lucretius
to the Epicurean idea of pleasure, by giving it more than simply
ethical connotations, correlating'it with the physical universe.
The atoms of Lucretius show the same characteristics as
i,
\ i
those of Epicurus. They need void (inane) to move (De Rerum Natura.
I, 330). They are solid and indestructible (I, 485-6 ). Their
motion is everlasting (II,^80<ff.) and manifests three "different

o N
types of behaviour: one is the vertical motion produced by their
weight (II, 84» 217-8), another is the leaping movements caused by
collisions (II, 85 ff.) and the third is the swerving motion
(clinamen) (II, 216-93). It would be a mistake, however, to think
thaÎTucr'etius has limited himself to translating Epicurus' atomic
doctrines into®Latin. The Lat^h poet's exposition of the atomic
theory is full of explanations and illustrations that are not .

C/ ^
found in Epicurus. But if someone should say that what we call
Lucretius' own contributions are in reality also mer^ translations
of some lost Epicurean text, instances may be founîn'"iDj^ P e r u m
Natura which prove the Roman origin of many of Lucretius' statements

A
illustrating 1,theJnature 2 Furthermore, does not
of things".-.
1 ' ■ ' ° < ,
Lucretius himself say that his aim is to "inlustrare Latinis

' . 1 4 f
versibus" "Graiorum obscura reperta" (I, 136-7)'wishing therefore
^ ■ , o „.
to elucidate, by his Latin poetry, what Democritus and Epicurus
had left unexplainak? ^ThjLs statement, in fact, seems to show
that the Epicurean SetntfLemocr^LLean material available to Lucretius
could not have been much more extensive than that available to us.
t o *
However, if Lucretius' account of the atoms and their behaviour
’- • 'i
is much more articulate and thorough than that of it& Greek models,
s - ’ . ' ,
no evidence can be found in De Rerum Natura of non-Epicurean

o
atomism.
6
It is .a common opinion that all that Lucretius added to
Epicurean philosophy was his poetry and his mood; Pierre Boyanc6
* O
'0 *
1
3 V u
*
22
and Luciano Perelli, as we have seen in the introduction, are
mainly responsible for these views, but the former scholar
especially omits to say that both a particular style and a
particular mood may be symptomatic of a particular philosophical
view, not only regarding ethics, which would be all too banal,
but regarding the very physical structure of the universe*. In “
other words, a certain style not “only can reflect an optimistic
or pessimistic mood and consequently marked ethical or existential
preoccupations, but it can also betray the acquisition on the
part of the writer of certain fundamental truths regarding the
nature of the universe. Such is the case of Lucretius.
The most conspicuous feature of his style is the sometimes even
monotonous recurrence of certain words, expressions and passages.
Luciano Perelli in Lucrezio poeta dell'angoscia. says that "in
Lucrezio . . . l'uso di particolari termini conferisce al testo
una carica di ossessione depressiva e psicopatica non ravvisabile

3 *
nelle altre fonti epicuree" (p. 30). He also discovers in
Lucretius what he calls "il martellamento ritmico ossessivo
e la ripetizione delle parole chiave" (p. 56).^ But Perelli sees
this tendency to repetition only as a symptom of the depressive
anxiety afflicting the Latin poet and does not seem to be aware
•
> r , f
of the fact that it is exactly this morbid state of Lucretiuf’
mind that brings him,to the more or less conscious knowledge of
what Bergson, centuries later, called "the absolute rigidity of
the laws of nature" and of nature's recurring patterns. And it

' V \
is again by means of Lucretius' rhetoric that we may discover his
conception of force. 0 „<
/ , *
i
The structure of Lucretius' poetry continually mirrors the
structure pf hia|Weltanschauung. he himself says, ’
I quin etiam passim nostris iri versibus ipsis

multa elements vides multis communia verbis,
cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necesse est
confiteare alia ex aliis constare elementis;
non quo multa parun communis littera currat
aut nulla inter,se duo sint ex omnibus isdem,
sed quia non volgo paria omnibus omnia constant,
sic aliis in rebus item communia multa
multarum rerum cum sint primordia, verum
dissimili tamen inter se consistere summa
possunt; ut merito ex aliis constare feratur
humanum genus et fruges arbustaque laeta.
(II, 688-699)
The analogy between words in a sentence or letters in a word
-and atoms in a body of matter is found again in the first book of
" De Rerum Natura (823-29). It is not surprising, therefore, that
the recurrence of certain words in the text should betray not only
a preoccupation with the ideas expressed "by those words, but with
perceived in th& universe; for, as Lucretius says, the patterns of
language do imitate the patterns of nature. Consequently the
repetition of certain words is most conspicuous wherever Lucretius

u ■>
is particularly eager to show the regular and inevitable recurrence
of certain natural phenomena. (- The expression necessest, for example,
and its variations (necesse. necesst. necessum. necessumst.
necessust). all of them implying inevitability, inexorability and '

u
determinism, occur in the text one hundred and eight times and are
found in the greatest number in those passages where Lucretius id

I
)
most impressed by "the absolute rigidity of the .laws of nature*^
for instance, in the one thousand odd lines fa.46-1117) of the
(f.
mm
/ '
f^Lrst book, concerned exclusively with the basic elements of the
/universe, atoms and vo^ci, atomic combinations and properties, the

/
/ expression necessest î’ecurs twenty-one times. Twenty-five more
instances of this expression are found in the second booky*within .

/ / '
the nine hundred lines (62-991) describing the movements and
7 / ‘ : -
shapes of the at^/ms. The third /book, on the mortality of the ,goul
and.tJie_j.rrevocability of deatji, has seventeen instances of this

/
expression; it appears again nineteen times in the fourth book,
which deals with the atoms that produce sensations. However, the
fifth book, in spite of its being the longest of the six (1^57
lines), being the only one concerned, with society, the least
natural among universal manifestations, limits the use of the
expression necessest to six times, thus drawing our attention^
■ to the purely physical nature of Necessity. The sixth book, ip,
fact, which i© a discussion of physical phenomena on earth and
in the heavens and which contains the famous passage on death*
showing the inevitable end reached by all things, employs the
expression sixteen times.
At this point, the idea of necessity being much less frequent
in a human and social context than in a strictly physical
environment, one might assume that Lucretius conceived a view of
necessity as of a force, the decrees of which man, unlike, the
rest of nature, could disobey through the exercise of his own
free will. In the light of this observation, Lucretius' insistence
on the subject of freedom (II, 2*>l-93) and his lengthy elaboration
of the "swerve" theory adumbrated by Epicurus, ceases to be

I
inconsistent with a belief in Necessity, for while it gives man
— A .s .*
a chance of escape, within a social structure artificially imposed
on nature, it still leaves the entire Universe and all its phenomena
subject slo the unbreakable laws of determinism. It would be a

*
mistake, however, to think that the atoms, producing by the^r - ^
swerve free will in man, ara-Jtbemseivee-enduwecTwith free will.
Lucretius, i f fact, like Epicurus, uses the atomic decli-nation
only as a stratagem to account for human freedom; unlike Epicurus,
however, all through his work Lucretius never ceases to show the
role of,necessity in natural phenomena. Furthermore, Epicurus

» - *o
dismisses not only the necessity governing human actions but,

1 e
as we have seen, also the necessity of Democritus, which acts in
—f a purely atomic context, while Lucretius limits the range of
J'
freedom to the “mens ipsa", the mind of living creatures (II,
2%, 289). iThus the universe, in all its physical or, more
« ' *
precisely, inorganic manifestations, remains bound by the fati

1
foetera.
— — —
the
^ chains of fate.
Thus necessity reappears in 'philosophy, after having been
exiled by Epicufpus; but in De Rerum Nature, the idea of necessity

1
acquires new connotations'. The force that Democritus had cursorily^
4
brought into relation with th§ "whirl" becomes with Lucretius
something much more definite and' comprehensive: in the poem

/ ’ ^
of the Latin philosopher, becomes Venus. ^
Empedocles of Acragas is responsible for having given

0
Aphrodite the status of cosmic force and of main motive' power.
n * *
No one bdfore^him had attache^ bo great an Importance to the
. - i
/ ° '
*' * • '-A
t .v
£6
goddess of loveT He, ill fact, equated the goddess with" "^>"1 AtD( '«
(Kirk and Raven, fr. 424), the cosmic force which_is responsible
for the coming together of all things in ’the universe. However,

*
her power is counteracted and curtailed by that of
Strife, the other motive principle, which brings about the
separation of cosmic substances (Kirk and Raven, fr. 426 et al.).
Yet Empedocles was not the first to realize the extent of
Aphrodite's powers. .. Parmenides, in two passages considered by
Kirk and Raven Irreconcilable with the rest of hi6 doctrines, calls
, t
Aphrodite "the goddess who steers all; for she it is that begins
all the works of hateful birth and begetting, sending female to
mix with male and male in turn with female" (Kirk and Raven, fr.
3 5 8 )^ and is "the cause of moving an^| of coming into being for
them all, . . . the holder of the keys,justice and Necessity"

8
(Kirk and Raven, fr. 359). The juxtaposition of Justice and
Necessity is not surprising if we remember that passage" of
Anaximander where he says that "the source of coming-to-be for
existing things ig^that into which destruction, too,.happens
'according tb necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to
each other for their injustice according to the assessment of

. •\
---------------- ■ Q /
Time11' (Kirk a n d ^ a v e n 7 ~ T r . - 4 0 5 ^ ^ _ To Anaximander, tjiua^ an
"injustice" is whatever is done against the laws & Necessity.
Thus Parmenides, equating the goddess of love with Necessity, -
the all-powerful cosmic'agent, offers a precedent for Lucretius'
Venus.. Nevertheless, the appearance of thq? goddess in the proemium-

* 1 « . . ■* , «.
of De Rerum Natura still remains somewhat incongruous. Let us see^

' "#►" >
. * i- x
then,' if we can explain her presence in terms of .Lucretius* own thought
Lucretius, in true Epicurean fashion, uses all his p o w e r ¥ o f
persuasion to ban the gods and mythology from the universe« Early
/
in the first book (62-101) his attack on religion makes its

T %
-appearance, and the fifth book (1^6-23*/ contains a thorough
i
refutation of divinity as commonly imagined by man. Other remarks
/
on the futility and dangers of religion and on the powerlessne^s
of the gods-are scattered throughout the work as a wh.ole. Hpw,

i
•* I J
then, are we to explain the /presence of Venus, a goddess wjio
certainly is not described as indifferent to the universe*and

•
removed from' human
' affairs,/but,
' ' I on the contrary, as she through
whom "genus omne_a^ma_nium_|coacipiturl,--(I, i».-5),^ air^ as the only
one to govern the nature oj: tilings ffcl, 20)? J

i j
In the second book of De Rerum Natura Lucretijls himself
helps us to understand the/ figure of Venus; he says,

t)
siqui8 mate Neptunum Cereremque vocare
constitui'b'-irugjes et Bacchi nomine abtiti
mavolt quam labicls proprium proferre( vocamen,
- concedamus ut hjic t^rr^rum dictitet orbem
esse deum matrem, dum vera re tamen ipse
religione animum turpi contingere parcat.
i ^ (II, 652-7)
It is clear, then, that the velue of Venus is no less
allegorical than that of Neptune, Ceres or Bacchus: it is a

i
poetical appellation completely bereft of any religious or
mythological connotation. But i f / then, V e n u ^ l e a metaphor,
what does she stand for?

i *
The position of Venus at the beginning fo t De Return Natura.
in the capacity of inspiring muse and as object of the poet's
Invocation, has led many critics to see the goddess as a mere
! /f
\ r • ' l
' , . • - - • / • ....................................
28
poetical device belonging to a rich tradition of poems starting
with an invocation to a muse or divinity. The first two words of
Lucretius* poem, "Aeneadum genetrlx". alluding to her as mother of
the Romans, seems to have been an Imitation of Ennius' line, "te

12.
sane, alta precor Venus, te genetrix patris nostrl" (Annales. 52).
Again, tHe'" "te sociam studeo" of line 2k reminds one of the last
line o / " f a m o u s poem of^SSa^pho, where she begs Aphrodite to Join
shield/ with nurNifl the battlefield of love. J Moreover, the
deeK iption_of Venus roemium is velv similar to that of
iope, the muse of epic poetry, in the sixth book, where

I
cretius cAllh her "Calliope, requies hominum divomque^yoluptas,t
fVI, put this critical method or approach based on
fidentification of Venus with Calliope, unfortunately makes the

\
jnj&take-of considering Venus only as Kuse, forgetting the other !
numerous references to Venus as creative force of nature, and
consequently! greatly diminishes, in fact largely denies, the

i
impact of the goddess in the poem. E. Bignone, the main supporter
of the’ theory that identifies Venus with Calliope, sees her only
as "hominum divomque voluptas" (I, 1) and as herald of "tranquilla
pax" (I, 31)* thus as almost identical with the Calliope who
A,
brings both "requies" and "voluptas" (VI, 9 k ) * Hence he draws the >
conclusion that the "Venus lucretiana" symbolizes the Epicurean
principle of " dT'-TofT aboulic pleasure.^
It is tempting, in ffct, to see the, word "voluptas" as a translation
of the Epicurean term but, unfortunately, the text of
De Rerum Natura does not support this interpretation. Actually,

/ . . I » /
the word "voluptas" appears mostly in association with Venus, erotic
N V'Si
' * * ' fJ' ‘ ' ^ ^ r ,a h .14,

. w v . 1 . _±fi, ijl
29
16
pleasures, and other violent emotions or cravings, except when j
J
it becomes an attribut£ of Calliope or when as a term It is
modified by adjedtivete such as "blanda" (II. 966) or "divina"
(III, 28); while the Epicurean ‘'pleasure principle" is best 1
translated*by Lucretius with words such as "suave” (II, 1, 5),
"dulcis" (iV, 7 ) and "lucnndus" (II, 1 9 ) which, in fact, appear
in the most Epicurean passage of De Rerum Natura. the first sixty
lines of the second book. Furthermore, the word "voluptas". rooted
in the verb "volo" is much closer to " (a word related to
the Greek verb to desire, to love) than to a word like
"vj^c'/rj", which would be best translated by "suavitas".
The Venus of Lucretiu^^^therefore, seen in the light of these

(( \ /
observations, stops beingNthe "n<)ov»| Ki^" of
c( v /
Bignone and becomes " ^ d o v ' ^ Ki^r|T"'LK»JJl, pleasure as a moving
principle and a cosmic force. Antonio Traglia in his work Sulla

17
formazlone spirituale di Lucrezio. adopts this view (p. 197 ff.),
but fails to consider'a point of fundamental importance: the
relationship between the "Venus genetrix" of the first book of De
Rerum Natura and the "Venus erotica" of the fourth book.
\ Venus, in the first-book, represents the force of sexual desire,

N , . -
but "here the stress is placed more on the final product of this
force, facility, creation, than on the force itself. Venus
represents birth rather than love and therefore resembles more
Juno Natalis than the Venus described by so many Greek myths as the
eternal concubine. Erich Neumann, in Amor and Psyche., says that
"The end |of Aphrodite's behtrtjr] seems .to be desire and sexual
intoxication; actually*it is fexility" (p. 8 7 ) . ^ Later he says
that -'.'the myths and mysteries of 'Aphrodite are not Greek but
come from,the Near Eastern precinct of the Great Mother, of whom ’
'all the Greek goddesses Represent partial aspects" (p. 160). It
is in the light of this statement, in fact, .that Lucretius*
description of the Magna Mater (II, 600-643) should be seen: ’
namely, as one aspect of Aphrodite, and, more precisely, that
aspect of Venus whic)gp>ls most conspicuous in the proemium of the
first book. The identification of this Venus with the Magna
Mater, or Mother Earth isf furthermore, stressed by the twice-
recurring Juxtaposition of Venus and earth. In the first lines,
of the first took Luc reti us says, "tibi |for Venus^ suavis daedala
tellus Submittit flores" (I, 7-8), and later in the same book,
^ 1
^ a
unde animals genus generatim in lumina vitae

redducit Venus, aut redductum-daedala tellus
unde alit atque auget generatim pabula praebens?
(I, 227-29)
However, this particular facet of Venus does little to support

• /
Traglia*s Venus kiVf| T \ K r j " . Venus, in her role of "genetrix" .
of mother, is not easily reconcilable with Venus as moving force;
therefore, in order to substantiate a theory such'as Traglla's ^

« t,
whiQh aims at making of Venus £ force,, an "6lan vital", it is
necessary tp sever the goddess^ from her maternal role and associate
her with a less organic and more kinetic element in Qe Rerum Natura
s *
namely with a concept of force.
The concept of Venus as force seems to acquire increasing
strength in Lucretius*' pind as his work develops. While in the

* <
first book Venus, as we have seen, is intimately associated with

t
i *
'v _ f
- * ,*
L )/ \ N
: . ... / < -
• • - \
• • ' v 31 '
the earth and its breeding, in the second book we find her allied
*
with "dia Voluptas” . called by Lucretius "dux vitae11, the guide of j 1
life (II, 172-3); and while in the firfct book "voluptas" had
appeared as one of the many attributes of Venus (I, 1), in'this
passage of the second book it seems to have already acquired the
status of a complete divinity working in cooperation with Venus.

* ' 1
These few lines, in fact, are the preparation for the fourth book,
where Venus as "genetrix" will disappear almost completely and make \>
place for another Venus called, this time, "voluptad" or "cupido".

* 1
We might say that Venus herself has given birth to a being which
displays a strong Resemblance to its mother but is endowed with a '
more selfisif^nature, that is, less interested in pleasure &b a means

■4 1« ,.
to creation than lhxpleasure for its own sake. This being is Eros,
for whom offspring is a mere accident resulting from its power ^>f~
attraction. This strange divinity is the result of the love between
Venus and Mars. It is thus interesting to note that both Venus and
, Mars appear in the1 proemium of Pe Rerum Natura.(I. 51-40) as lovers,
almost as if Lucretius, by this description, wanted to prophesy,
as it were, not only the birth of Eros from the womb of Venus but
also the genesis of a conception of Eros in his own mind. The fourth
book, in fact^So longer the field of action of the Venus we have
known in the first book, but rather a battlefield where Eros armed „
with a bow is war-lord. This does not mean that Venus has disappeared,
to be replaced by Eros, but that Venue has undergone a transformation,

,■> '
acquiring the characteristics of her son* In the fourth book she

<>
stops being "alma" Venus, and all those-attributes, such as "lepor" '
(I, 15, 28), "cupido" *r, 16, 20), "voluptas" (I, 1), "amor" (I. lgf.
A
•
■ ■— - ... . Tmni-Jki
34, 36); which in the proemium had been mere tools used by Venus to
achieve her end, fertility, become in the fourth book either elements
of nature in themselves or'individual manifestations of her. Eros,
initially under the disguise of an adverb, "cupido11 (I, 16, 20),
becomes now a noun, "cupido11. and a personified noun at that (IV, ■
1057, 1093, 1115, 1138).
Eros,' however, is not merely a new version of the Venus we
have "known.. Not for nothing is he born of the marriage of, Venus
and Mars. *There is-more in him than a mere abstraction of the force -
of attraction employed by Venus for maternal purposes. Eros contains
in himself the chromosomes of his father Mars, the god of war, and
therefore achieves the union of male and female, not only through
k ^ ^
fond attfactlonb e t w e e n the sexes but also through the natural
antagonism existing between them. Lucretius describes lovers in
the following way:
_ . . . etertim potiundi tempore in ipso

fluctuat inêrtis erroribus ardor amantum
" nee constat; quid primum oculis manibusque fruantur
quod petiere, premunt arte faciuntque dolorem
c o r p o r i s e t d e n t e 8 inlidunt saepe labellis
osculaque adfligunt, quia non est pura voluptas
et stimuli:s u b s u n t q u i instigant laedere id ipsum
qtiodcumquei est, rabies unde illaec germina surgunt.
" ^ V ^ 1076-83 )!9
Nevertheless,the struggle does not last forever: "leviter
poenas,frapgit Venus;lnter amorem Blandaque refrenat morsus
admixta voluptas" (IV, 1084-85).
r It is in this passage (1076-85) that the dual personality oT***
Eros is best shown. Uls paterhal, Martian side Is manifested In
the power of "amor". "Amor", in Lucretius, is, in fact, always
associated with something negative, painful or degrading. It
o
wounds cthe mind with "dira lubido". dire craving (IV, 1046-7);
it is like a shaft thrown from one.body, to the other (105.

3,“5 4 );,
it should be shunned like a pestilence (1063-4); it is the source

' *•
of pain (1066-7 )j, it is based on illusions (1101); many are its
evil consequences (1141-42); it possesses powerful snares (II4 6 ); *

vLr
£Lt is often discreditable and humiliating *<1158); it is ax form of
* > > N
."Voluptas" but of a kind which Lucretius calls "non pura volhptas"
'
\
(1081), that i6, pleasure mixed with pain, Venus and Mars. x -"
\
On the other hand, the side of Eros which is inherited fro,m
his mother Venus, is like a "gutta dulcedinis" trickling in Ihe
heart, which soon'bScomes "frigida cura" on the a r r i v a l \ f "amor"
(IO59-6O). As we have seen*in the above passage, the Venereal
aspect of Eros hac also the power of soothing the anguish of \

• •
. . .. ■ \
lovers once the climax of their relationship has been reached \
\
(1084-5)•» Thus, while "amor" is "non pura voluptas". Venus is
*
"pura voluptas" (1075,1, "blanda voluptas" (1085). Lucretius
stresses this difference between "amor" and Venus when he says
that it is possible to enjoy the fruits of Venus without being
ensnared in the coils of "amor’.' (1073). Lucretius also identifies
"amor" with "cupido". Cupido" is "dira" (1090)'as the "djra
lubido" of "amor" (10^6-7); it'blinds man (1153) and inflames
hie heart" (1090). One, in fact, feels that the terms "amor" and
"cupido" or the expressions "in amore" and "cupide" could easily

* ' l
be interchangeable; which is not surprising when we think that
% A
both Amor a'nd| Cupid were the names given by the Romans to the
Greek god Eros. ** ^
Ih
The theory that the description of Eros in Lucretius contains
many allusions to the god's Martian origins is substantiated by

t
the frequent recurrence in the text oif images of blood and wounding,
illustrate^ by words like "saucia", wounded (10^7), "vulnus". wour^d
(1CM+9), "sanguis", blood, and "ictu", blow (1050), by "ruber umor".
red liquid (1051), "volnera plagis"., wgunds through blows (1070),
and'"pereunt". die (1121). Furthermore, what can bqtter illustrate
the juxtaposition of Love and Death in Lucretius' work than the
fact that his poem starts with an invocation to Venus and ends
with a description of Death? And is it not remarkable that the'

o’
Symptoms of death by plague (VI, 1185-92) should remind us of
those same symptoms which Sappho describes as proper to -love-

<e .
, , _21
sickness?
Today this view of love has become rather common; Tristan
and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, the "Eros-Thanatos" of Freud and
KarCuse and the Duino Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke (the first
♦
one in particular) have explained and popularized the communion
of Such antithetical concepts as Love and Death, and Love and War.
Similarly, Henry de Montherlant, in Un incompris. described
lovers in the following way: "les amants se heurtent et se
soulSvent comme deux vagues qui s'affrontent, mais ensuite, comme
elles, lie retombent en se raelant" (Act I, Scene 5)»
Thus we have seen not only that Venus is the form that
I
cosmic force takes in the universe of De„Rerum Natura. but also
that this Venus is of a particular kind, either working with or

0
transforming herself into Eros. The result of this collaboration
or metamorphosis is a force which is very fiilailar to the Empedodean
IS , ,
35
combination of (J>iXxoC a n d N f c t k ^ ; b$»^jwhile Empedocles envisaged'
the existence of two distinct fofles, Ltfcretius, by seeing the
former as Aphrodite and the latter as Ares, combined the two into
0
one single force, Eros, both the fruit and the combination of the
01 1 ' * {jO
pareptalôuple. Furthermore, whildj Empedocles had regarded Strife
mainly as an agent of separation, Lucretius Realized that the
separation brought about by Strife and War was only a consequence
of the coming together of antagonistic bodies; consequently, he
viewed Strife as a form of attraction rather than as a form of

0
repulsion. Thus, the attractionôf Love was made to differ from
the attraction of Strifônly in termd^ of ^ e former's being

-iv
pleasant and the latter's being painful.
The cdncept of Eros, consequently, is-most probably to be
traced back to Empedocles and to be seen as a development of the
latter's ide^r. Epicurus, unfortunately,0had nothing to do with
the formulation of this idea, not only because he had not included |
' 1
any force in his universe but because he had assigned no role to
love except that of dangerous and harmful emotion (Vatican Sayings,
LI).21*
0 It is not surprising to discover that It&dretiue' concept of
force owes a great debt to Empedocles' theories; we know, in fact,
that of all the philosophers known by Lucretius, with the exception

o ' C
fe . . - '
of Epicurus, Empedocles was held in t|ie highest esteem by the Latin

" V ■
poet, who calls the Greek ppet-phi^caôpher,a most illustrious man
(I, 729) endowed with a divine mind (I, 731) and "^lx humana . . .
stirpe creatus", of almost divine stock (I, 733), all these ^being
attributes which Lucretius had applied to Epicurus himself.
36
1>
/
However, keeping in mind the admiration the Latin philosopher had
for Empedocles, it is surprising to notice th&t Lucretius mentions
him only in order to refute his theory of the four basic elements
^1, 712-16) which, with the Love-Strife theory, forms''the whole of
Empedoclean philosophy. This curious- behaviour on the part of
Lucretius seems to imply that the part of the Empedoclean thought
which attracted Lucretius most and justified his flattering remarks
was that part of the Greek's philosophy which concerned force, which
part, however, for reasons I cannot* fathom, he does not mention*
Nevertheless, the appearance of Eros and Venus in De Rerum Natura
sufficiently proves the presence of Empedoclean elements, even if
we cannot speak of a wholly conscious assimilation of these on the
part of Lucretius.
These elements, as Empedocles' work amply shows, affect bpth
the animal/human world and the inaninj^te or inorganic universe.
Similarly there are reasons to believe that Lucretius' principle,
Eros, governs not only human or animal intercourse but also the
behaviour of the atoms themselves. Moreover, it is important to
Stress, in the context of atomic behaviour, the hegemony of Eros,
rather than that of Venus. Let us see, now, why.
We have seen already where the main differences between Venus
and Eros lie. Venus is seen by Lucretius as a force that has an
aim to reach* a task to fulfill, namely the continuation of the
species and the constant renewal of life. This work of fertilization
is brought about through the help of forces called "voluptas".
"cupido" .•"amor" . Eros, on the other hand, being the very essence
of these three instrumental forces, though working at the service
i
* <i
o j.37
ofênusJVLs in itself blind, aimless. We might say, in modern
terms, that while Venus is a force, that is,endowed with a vector,
a direction, Eros is simply pure energy. This interpretation of

*
Eros' aimlessness finds further confirmation in the fact that for
Lucretius, Eros does not" operate merely in terms of sexual attraction
but also in terms of.sexual antagonist where it becomes a Martian
principle eager to hurt and destroy, as we have seen in the
description of the lovers in the fourth book. Thus, Eros is
characterized by two fundamental attributes, its blindness and its
power of attraction, be it productive (Venus) or destructive (Mars).
The first attribute, blindness, as we have seen, characterizes
all erotic behaviour. The frenzy of love is called by Lucretius
"vulnus caecum” (IV, 1120), and the behaviour of man under the effect
of sexual stimuli is also called blind. Men, when "cupidlne caecl"'
— blinded by de6ire (IV, ll53)**âre unable to see and think
objectively, ^©d ascribe to the person they love attributes that
these do not possess (IV, 1153-76). This blindness belongs to all
forms of violent craving, not only sexual desire; for instance,

is
"cupido honorum", lust qf honours,^.is also called "caeca" by

o
Lucretius (ill, 59). But what is more important, this same
j
characteristic is frequently attached to the atoms themselveB and
£o their motions. In theofirst book the atoms are said to be
"caeca" (I, 112^). Qqe should note at this point, however, that
the adjective "caecus" in Lucretius often means "hidden" and not
'.'blind"; the "caeca" in line 1110 of the first book seems to mean
"blind", but in other places (I, 277 , 2 9 5 ; II, 328, 714) the worji
"caecus" has to be translated as "unseen". However, the important
/ .
38
thing is that the epithet "blind" i8 applied to the,atoms' motion
rather than to their bodies, In fact, Lucretius, in a passage in
the second book, repeats three times that the atoms clash together
by blind blows and motions, using expressions such as "caecos
motusn Xl27~8). "caeciB plagis" (129), and "ictibus caecis" (136).
When discussing^the^power of the Magnesian stone, or magnet,
Lucretius speaks of "caecisÔHHaagibus11, blind attachments
between the magnet and iron (VI, 1016^Tê'~ahall see,, later, how
even in the field of magnetism, Eros plays an importaSI ?le,
Natural forces, such as that of the wind, are called "blind";
Lucretius speaks, in'fact,-of "venti caeca potestas" (III, Zk7, 269).
At this point it might,be of some*interest to observe that
Lucretius seems to identify his motive principle "voluptas" with
that of "voluntas" and therefore hiB concept of Eros with that

t-K
of /will. Even without, any support from the text, this inferehce
shbuld not surprise us, once we realize that "Eros", " cupido".
I ■ ’
"Voluptas" and "voluntas" are all etymologically rooted An verbs
/
implying various degrees of desire ("*.£•(.«*>". "cupio". ^volo")
In the passage on the "clinamen" in the second book,, Lx

Lucretius
Asks:
/
unde est haec, inquam, fatis ayolsa voluntas . 1
per quam progredimur quo ducit/quemque voluptas.
■ • d i , 257 -8 r 2
/ . jt,
It is clear, from these lines, th^t "Voluntas" A n d "voluptas"
are, in reality, one and the same principle; moreover, their
position at the end of the line seeps .to be clue more to a desire
to juxtapose the two terms than to metrical/requirements. The

' 0 / 1
identification of the two terms is again stressed in the fourth
j
book, where Lucretius, speaking of the swelling of stimulated
genitals ah4 of the resulting ejection of'seed says: / v

t
j
inritata tument loca semine fitque voluntas
eicere id quo se contendit dira lubido. ;
(tV, 10^5-6)°
•v
“Lubido” . here, replaces "voluptas11 but, as we have seen earner, ‘
the terms are almost synonymous. The two two-line passages thus
show marked similarities. The term "voluntas11 of .the first line
seems to be in jlirect apposition to the "voluptas" of the first
passage and to/the "lubido" of the second passage, this apposition
receiving further stress in both cases from the position of all
thesa~-tsrms at the end of the line. Therefore it would njot be .
too arbitrary to^suggest that Lucretius envisaged the possibility
oif relating the principleôf^liros~-tânjeven wider and more
'encompassing one, that of will. "

0 ‘ . -f .
In fact, I tend to see.Lucretius as a precursor of Sdhopeghauer.
This is not the place to allow for a comparative study of Lucretius-
and Schopenhauer (a study which, however, I intend to pursue in
the future), but I believe that a few quotations from the German
philosopher may help us to understand better some aspects of what
we may call the Lucretian metaphysics, especially those concerning '

j < *
the idea of Eros.
Schopenhauer says in his work The World as /foill and Representation

' i '
that "That which makes itself known to the individual consciousness
as sexual Impulse in general, and without direction to a definite
Individual of the other sex, is in itself, and apart from the t

‘ ‘ 2k
phenomenon, simply will-to-live'J (II, p. 535). He explains this
/ ' ' -
idea in the following passage:
The sexual impulse is proved‘to l?e the decided And

strongest affirmation of life by the fact that/for 5
man in £he natural state, as for the^ animal, it is
> his^ life'V final end and highest goal. Selfpreservation
and° maintenance are his first aim, and as Soon' as he ~
has providecNfor that, he aims only at the propagation
of the race; As a merely natural being, he/cannot
aspire to anything more. Nature too, the Anner
being of which is the will-to-live itself/ with all
her force impels both man and the animal/to propagate.
After this she has attained her end with the individual,
and is quite indifferent to its destruction; for, as
the will-to-llve, she is concerned only with the
. preservation of the species; the individual is
nothing to her.- /
(I, PP. 3*9-30)
i/
f
The idea that Lucretius' Eros might be Schopenhauer's Will
in embryo has had very few followers and these limit themselves
, o
to vague passing remarks on-the Subject. V. J. McGill, in his
I . *
biography Schopenhauer. Fessimist and Pagan, claims that "Np
philosopher has emphasized the power of love as much as

'
Schopenhauer and since Lucretius, indeed, no one has emphasized
it at all" (p. 1 6 6 ) . ^ John Masson* in Lucretius. Epicurean and

' r
Poet, attempts a closer parallel between the two philosophers
and concludesâ^rather confused chapter by saying that "There
are several points of^coirtact^ some of them pretty elose, between
Schopenhauer and Lucretius, but,at preseht'-w^cau only remind our
readers how Lucretius too intimately associates Will with the
origin of Force" (p. 228). j The most recent statement on the

i
subject is by Luciano Perelli who, speaking of the proemium.of
De Rerum Natura in his previously cited work, says that "nell'inno
a Venere . . . 1 ’impulse al piacere i un/mezzo di cui "la natura
si— vale_per^la conservazione delle specie. Esiste a mio avviso
/r
una chiara analoglia con la cieda volont& di vivere schopenhaueriana,
che tuttTo-ojiove^ nella natura e che spinge 1'uomo ail'illusione del
piacere, mentre ihyrealtA la natura ci offre soltanto 1 'alternativa >*'S.
fra 11 dolore e la hoia" (p^^2L7).^
In the light of these passages, then, the lines that Lucretius
dedicates to the "swerveMâcquire new meanings^ One may observe,
in fact, that what Lucretius had in mind when writingthese lines

' ''
was a concept of'will as universal force rather than one of "liberum
arbitrlum" as understood by medieval thinkers. It is true that
here the Latin poet is describing the phenomenon of free-will,

*•• J
but this phenomenon becomes in his eyes of such cosmic Importance
(by being made into the determining factor for the creation of the
* a
universe) that it can hardly be made to resemble any later conception
of free-will. Free-will, in fact, before any modern notion of

« ■
*
statistical determinism had come forth, had always been an
attribute of man, and its existence had always been a product
of theological speculation rather than of empirical observation;

i
by contrast, Lucretius' "freedom" not only affects the whole
universe from the a t o m ^ o man but is the " causa sine qua non"
for its existence. Furthermore, we have seen how, in lines
257-8 of the second book the concept of "voluntas", even when
meaning "free-will", is equivalent to "voluptas". a concept
which is unseparable from that of £ros. The connection between
Eros and will, moreover, acquires paramount importance once we
realize that the presence of the power of attraction of Eros
explains the phenomenon of the "swerve" which would otherwise
remain unaccounted for, as in Epicurus' work. In fact, instead
V * .
* # ‘
kZ
of e ^ l a i n i n g the anomalous motion of the atom as some chance- freak
of nature, we can now easily elucidate it In terms of Some form
of magnetic or, anthropomorphically speaking, erotic attraction
between two atoms. Once we accept Eros as the ruler of the
Lucretian universe, the enigmatic "clinamen" offers no longer any
problem,
Thus, after having accounted for blindness as an attribute
of Eros and after haying seen how Eros is connected to a notion of
will, we may now try to ascertain the extent of his power in an
atomic context. ' It will be necessary at this point to keep in
mind the dual Venereal-Martian personality of Eros,
Once the will of Eros has brought about the first collision,
the work of creation has begun, and, with it, Venus the matchmaker
xhas joined hands with Mars the warrior. Lucretius illustrates

\
the motion of atoms as they come together to create matter, in -
*
the following way: .
\
contemplator enito,' cum soils lumina cuwque

insertl lupdunt radii per opaca domorum:
multa mihuth. modis multis per inane, videb-is
corpora misceM^ radiorum lumine in ipso
et velut aeterno\êrtamine proelia pugnas.
edere turmatim certantia nec dare pausam,
conciliis et discidiis eXercita crebris; (
‘conicere ut possis ex n & s / primordia rerum
quale sit in magno iactar£xsemper inani.
(II, llit-122r°
The vocabulary in this passage is clearly taljtan^lrom warfare
("certamine". 11proelia11. "pugnas11. "turmatim". "certaptia11;
"conciliis et dlscldiis"). Similarly, wherever Lucretius
has to describe the motions of the atoms, words like "ict

\
Jlk. A ,'.
or '.'plaffa11 meaning "blows", Occur with great frequency ("ictus":
1 , 528, 1055; II, 85, 99, 136; "plage": I, 528, 583, 633, 1025,
1042, 1050;- II, 129, 141, 223, 22 7, 285, 288, 53$, 715, 726, 956,
1020, 1112, 1140, 1143)• It seems as If Lucretius had come to

f
understand the importance of war and that M a r s 1 "fera moenera".
.savage works (I, 2 9 , 32), are not always destructive, since

(
in the hands of Eros^thoy become an indispensable tool for
- ,, *
creation. At this point I will also remind the reader of that
passage in the fourth book where the sexual act is described in
violently sanguine/tones; the section on sex is interspersed not
only with images of blood and wounding, as we have observed, but
the same terms— "ictus" and "plaga"— which had characterized
the motions of the atoms, reappear here in an erotic context

- " . *
("ictus": IV, 1050, 1052, 1245, 1273, 1284; " plaga": IV, 1070, 1146).
Lucretius may have had a certain difficulty in visualizing
and accounting for Eros, his "primum mobile" . The reader may
0 s 1 X— ** V
feel its presence^ 1 1 through De Rerum Natura and be more or less
convin^d of Its existence by the recurrent use j?f^_cerbaifi words
and expression^ or by the^rêa^dr^îTt^position of certain
.concepts. Lucretius may have never expressly-stated that the
y/. Universe is ruledjay-theôwer of Eros or even by that of Venus,
since he limits her sway to the animal and human world. However,
/ ' . ■
the conception of such forces is certainly7strongly implied by
- / ..
Lucretius, as I have tried to demonstrate, and it might be referred
to as the "aestuS", the exhalation,, as it were, of De Rerug Mature.
Just as Luciano Perelli has felt the need o f extracting the emotional
. and pathological elements from Lucretius* work, 1 haveatt^mpted,
in the present discussion, to, abstract whatever' metaphysical or '
* , *
/Mystical beliefs underlie the work of the Latin thinker.
Nevertheless, despite the clandestine nature of Lucretius'
"Eros principle", i?ts existence is so often .disclosed'by the poet's
use of language, and b y toften unconscious juxtapositions of ideas,

\
that it can no longer be denied. In tlje section on the power of
the Magnesian stone (VI, 998-1064), Lucretius gives us the last,
and perhaps most forceful and convincing, illustration o f ’the
•, control exerted by Venus and Eros over inorganic matter.'
\ The power of the magnet, as if Lucretius intended it to be
another manifestation of Eros' "moenera". is described again in
the terminqlogy of love and combat similar to that employed in

\
* *•
the description of atomic movements. Words like I'conexa". connected
(VI, 1010)* "compagibusX attachments (1016), and verbs like
"pelliciat". entice (1001) and "cohaeret" . cling together (10101*—

s( < — -- "/
K"K ' • " /
all implying communion and attraction; coexist with words like .
"plafiis" (1003, 1020) and verbs like "impellit" . drive oiJ (1033),
"verberat", beats (1028, 1039) and "offenBare" . ’strike /gainst
(1053), which create a pictuie of antagonism and "dijSQordia" (IO4 8 ).
Madame Mayotte Bollack, in her article entitled/"La chalne

X - ' °PQ
aimantine: Lucr$ce et ses modules gpecs", 7 justly /states that
©
"L'episode de l'aimant, au sixidme livre du De Rerum Natura.
est encore plus meconnu qu'iricompris" (p. 165)./ She realizes
that the coming together of magnet and iron aha their coming
apart wiên separated by bronze (1042-46) arar b oth.instances of
universajl phenomena; the first shoWs that /\Lucrdcd\rein^rodult
dans son explication le prlncipe souvera/n de l'affikii6" (p. 181),
:\
\
v , ...
the second, "la discorde" (p. l 7 k ) • The antithetical- tnodee of
behaviour
a
shown by magnet and iron are, in fact, instances of
the Empedocleap principle of Love and Strife; howevOr, this dual
principle appears in Lucretius' account of magnetism as a double
manifestation of the same force, that of attraction. Madame
Bollack says, in fact, that "les incompatibilites se fondent
sur le meme principe que l'affinite, ou plutdt la haine et 1 'amour
sont deux manifestations equivalentes quoique o p p o s e s de la
nature deschoses" i7£)f and concludes her study by bringing

• 1 *• . ‘
* » i *
the phenomenon of m^gndtism, as described by Lucretius, "sub

• c * 1
) , ’ . ' . .■ *
'^s.pecie aeternitatis" ; "La loi du mOpde," she, says, "sa vie, son •.
aimant
' ** x
(au sens mystique du mot),
„ ,»
c'esb bien,
‘ ‘V
si l'on'veut,
■' * ’ -- ' ’ '' . '
l ,,amourl present dans l'echange et, dans la transformation, maEis
* v * ' ’ * , ,
c'est un amour'precaire et nênace, implique? compris dans le flux,

, j
universel, a l'origine duquel il.'ne participe'.plus" (p. 185). ■

' x s
In the first book Lucretius says: -> - /
ergo praeter inane et corpora tertia #er se

nulla potefst rerura in numero natura relinqui,
nec quae sub sehsus cadat ullo tempore nostros
nec rationd animi quam quiqqvt&m possit apisci.
(I, M 5 - 4 8 K 0
We have discovered, nevertheless that a third nature does exist,
and that it manifests itdelf as a force called Venus or Erds,
depending on whether the coming together of organic Or inorganic

. ( ■* " * ' *
bodies involves-pleasure cr pain, union or collision, however, •
v “ jv
* ' ,
this nature, which Lucretius might have called "clandestlnam
caecgrftqfce11. secret and unseen (I, 779)■» can be perdeived neither
byM)ur senses nor by reason'; its existence may be sunniB’ed by *‘
•■ - , '.-I'M*' - ' /-•*»

46
sîeer speculative intuition. It is thus that we may perhaps interpret

t
the four lines above quoted: if a third nature exists, neither
through our senses nor through our reason can we become acquainted
\
with it. It is true that Lucretius repeatedly elevates the senses
j '
to the level of supreme judge of reality (I, 422-5* 699-700),
and in the fourth book, he voices, a strong and lengthy defence

*
of sense perception and of reason as based on it:
invenies primis ab sensibus esse creatam

notitiem veri neque sensus posse refelli.
quid maiore fide porro quam sen6us hab’

e ri
debet? an ab sensu falso ratio orta valebit
dicere eos cOntra, quae tota ab sensibus orta est?,..
(IV, 478-9, 482-4)
But Lucretius is hardly aware of the fact that the existence of
thbvatom, the basis of his philosophy, is in no way based on
sense perception, since- the atoms*; as Lucretius himself says,
are invisible (I, 268), as well as their motions, which, as we-

fa )
. have seen, are frequently called "caeca", here meaning "unseen"
D „■ >r-
and not "blind". .The existence of atoms and of .their motion is,
rather-, inferred from that analogy with parti.cles of dust floating
in a sunbeam whilh we have had a chance to analyse (II, 112-22).
We could 6ay, therefore, that Lucretius' philosophy is based more
on the associative facility of the mind, in other words >on imagination

, . /
' ' ♦/
and intuition, than on strictly empirical observation and reasoning;
thus, it is not surprising' that the former faculty should have be An
responsible also for a conception of force and for the introduction

‘ * ♦ k
of the almost mystical notion of Efos. On accodnt of the. intuitive

*
nature of Lucretius' thought, we may rightly call -De Rerum Natura
/ ,
\
V 47 .
the product of his Weltanschauung rather than of his philosophy,
defihing Weltanschauung in Schleiermacher's words as an "emotional
view of the"universe"
With Lucretiufe the void which Epicurus had left so empty
and sterile becomes the dwelling of a mysterious energy. What
Heisenberg said about nineteenth-century atomism holds true for
Lucretius, too: his void was real "inasmuch as it was a transmitter

■5<?
of fields of force". But Lucretius' addition of force to
physics should be seen more as the prodigpt of his poetical mind \
than of his rational intellect. More precisely, it should be
regarded as a fruit of that lyrical rationalism which Gide admired
so greatly in ancient'Greeks, a people among whom^'la philosophic

77
alimentait la poesie, la poesie exprimant la philosS^hie". •
'' '
° ' CHAPTER Ilf.
The preceding chapter has allowed us to perceive some of

Vi
the most serious lacunae in the scholarship on ancient atomism.
C/_
Similarly, Bacon's atomism has often been misinterpreted and its

U
value seldom recognized,, Francis Bacon is usually known as the
' - ' ;
''first thinker in the seventeenth centpry who postulated the ^
n > t
importance of the inductive process in philosophy and science by
, 1 , X
stressing the need for observatidta and experiraentatioh. Bacon's
fame, in fact, like that of Descartes, rests mainly on his "method,"

* > '~f i
’ v
o n ’his approach, to the study of nature, rather than on particular
insights into the workings of the universe. Critics consequently
have focused their attention mainly on Bacon's Novum Organum.,
his work on the methodology ,of science, and hays overlooked

( ‘ «
’K'- writings such as the De Princlpiis atque Origlnibus. which attempt
to account for the most obscure manifestations of nature. In fact,
if one goes beyond Bacon's purely methodological preoccupations,
‘ox. one finds a man who came very close to formulating, a theory of the
a k /
interchange between matter and energy, thus heralding*what i6
• ' O ’
perhaps the most controversial issue in modern physics*
&^ °Ih spite\ of the -frequent mention, in Bacop's works, of ancient £>
- yfcr&ek atomihts, j^t is intriguing to notice that Lucretius, rather ^
than Democritus ancl Epicurus, exerted the greatest influence on the

% C£&
natural philosophy of âcon, although he seldom names the Latin ,
philosopher. Th^ natpreand extent of this influence has been

. ►' ' ' ' ' 1 ‘ >•
v completely, disregarded, in Spite of the considerable evidence ”
'' *" ' 1 \ • V '-J
supporting it. Some critics of. Bacon have gone as far as to deny
absolutely his. atomism; it is not\surprising,' then, that once such
\ - • \ ' ‘
\ '-V ' - 0 \ - •
\ . \
, - . k9
heights of absurdity" are reached, Lucretius should find no place

> v
in studies on the background'of Bacon's thought. Yet, it is by a
careful reading of Bacon's works on atomism, the De PrinQipiis
atque Orlginibus in particular, that one perceives the impact
« of Be Rerum datura on Bacon. Bacon's atomic theory, in fact,
represents a fundamental departure from traditional Greek atomism
and conspicuously betrays a deep understanding of Lucretius and
of the modifications brought by him to Democritean and Epicurean
physics?
G; Sortais, Paolo Rossi and J. K. Houck are responsible for

'/
9 ' ' ±
o the writing of the three most important bibliographies of Bacon.
' The one compiled by Sortais appeared at the end of his work La
philosophic m o d e m e depuis Bacon .jusqu'd Leibniz, published in
Paris in 1922; however, despite,the wealth of the material
collected, it seems to be mainly concerned with the influence of
Bacon on later ages and, moreover, due to the year of its

>
pub'l^^^gnr'-i't is now outdated. Paolo Rossi tried to bring the
work of Sortais up to date, that is, to the year 1956* By compiling

>
a short, fourteen page bibliography which can be found in the 1957
issue of the Rlvlsta crltica di storia della fllosofia under the
title "Per una bibllografia degli scritti su Francesco Bacone
(1800-1956)." But what is probably the .most complete bibliographical

* t, ^
work on Bacon is Francis Bacon 1926~66. written by J. Kemp Houck,
published in London by the Nether Pres's in 1968; its seventy pages
apd its recent publication make--it an extremely-valuable research tool.
© ^
K •
However, none of the bibliographies show any signs of works
having been written on the influence of Lucretius on Bacon, exce]
for a two-column article, "Lucretius and Bacon on Death," by D.
Brewer, which appeared in the 1955 issue of Notes and Queries
(p. 509- 10 ) and is listed by Houck. Both £ouck and Bossi mention
the well-known work on the classical antecedents of Bacon’s philosophy,
Charles T. Harrison's "Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle and the Ancient Atomists"

* J
which appears in the fifteenth volume (1933) of Harvard Studies
in Philology and I^fcWâture. to which I will refer in the course of
this chapter. Another work dealing with Bacon's classical background
in general is a series of articles by V. de Magalhaes-Vilhena
called "Bacon et l'antiquite" stretching through five years of the
Revue philosophlque de la France et de l'etranger.1 Other works of ^
a general nature have been written on the influence of ancient
thought on Bacon's philosophy which do not appear in any of the
bibliographies; later in this chapter mention will be made of these
studies, although they tend to concentrate on Platonic and
Aristotelian influences and on the much-discussed atomism of Bacon.
As far as Lucretian scholarship is concerned, three works on
Lucretius and his influence stand out: G. D. Hadzits' Lucretius

2
and Hi6 Influence published in New York in ^935» Simone Fraisse's „
/
L'Influence de LucrSce en France au seizi&me siScle published in
Paris by Nizet in 1962, and W. B. Fleifcchmann'a Lucretius a n d .
English Literature 1680-1740 published in Paris in 1964.^ = Starting
with these latter studies and going on to the aBove-mentioned
Baconiana, we can determine to wha^ extent either Lucretian or
Baconian scholars have discovered analogies between Lucretius' and
rtf r « «
51
Bacon's thought.
Hadzits places Bacon, together with Gassendi, Newton, Leibnitz
and Boyle, among those who followed the theories of- the ancient
atomists (p. 285), but he also adds that Democritus and Epicurus,
rather than Lucretius, were responsible for Bacon's atomism (p.>286)
and that Lucretius' importance in this age was that of having added
"electric vitality" and poetry to the Greek theories so that "The
atom, so long despised, came, eventually, to be recognized as the
well-nigh most important entity in the physical universe" (p. 287).
Hadzits, in fact, sees Bacon as a "disciple of Epicurus 'and reader
of Lucretius" (p. 303), meaning by this that the English philosopher
considered Lucretius' merits as being mainly poetical. We shall
see later how Bacon's atomism ,wa^ probably more Lucretian-than
Epicurean, and how both Lucretius and Epicurus are eclipsed in his
work and replaced by Democritus for practical reasons. Hadzits
also adds that since "the seventeenth century could not and did
not follow Lucretius, the atomist, in his denial of divine creation
and of providence . . . Bacon, though perhaps with difficulty,'
retained his belief in God as a creator" (p. 287). We shall see,
however, that Bacon's God acquired Lucretian and pagan hues by
becoming associated with Eros. The study by Madame Fralsse
concentrates only on Lucretius' fertilizing effect on French soil
and consequently never mentions Bacon; the omission of Bacon from
her work, however, is hardly excusable when one-thinks that
Gassendi, the famous French atomist, knew of'Bacon's contributions
to science. ^Fleischmann, on the other hand, seems to show a certain
interest in the relationship between Lucretius and Bacon; he, in
/'
fact,\ûotefi extensive!^ from and gives a long commentary on

\ /
Charles T. Harrison’s/work, JIBacon, HobbeS, Boyle and the Ancient
Atomists," probably th e only yiork that deals at some length with
the, Latin and the English philosopher.
More is to be/ found, however, among the studies of Baconian
J scholars. I have*already Mentioned Harrison and Magalhaes-
Vilhena; Mayo’s/work Epicurus in England, 1650-1725 published in
Dallas by the ôuthwest Press, in *1934,^ deserves to be added to
the list, although his attention is fopused mainly on Hobbes.

//
These t^reeystudies, among those of a more general nature, remai,
the best aîd deserve to be discussed.^

r
Mayors work has become a standard «tork oh/ the influence oj
Epicureanism in England, but unfortunately his interest in the

d '
period between 1650 and 1725 shows an unjustified desire t«
(
dismiss Any appearance of Epicurus before 1650. The arbitrariness
of such a limitation in the scope of his thesis is reflected again

t
in its opening pages^ where Kayo, obviously compelled to account
for the decades immediately preceding the year 1650, briefly
disposes of Bacon and his relationship to Epicufus and his school,
6aying that "in spite of‘this generous appreciation {of Bacon for
the Epicureans] , in spite also of the utilitarian strain common,
in some degree, to the respective scientific outlooks, of Bacon add

t,
Epicurus, there could be in fact no essential affinity betweex^
the Englishman who preachedl all his life th,e necessity of finding
knowledge uncompromisingly upon experience, and the Greek PhD
lightheartedly ’made u p ’ a science conducive to the attainment of
his ethical aims" (p. 19). Here Mayo, in order jto Concentrate his
' . 53
1- *
attention on Hobbes with the least possible delay, seems to forget—
pelhaps cbnBeiously— that /two philosophies do not necessarily have
i o display similar ends ih order to be similar or related one to
/ the other.
/
If differences in ethical aims or existential attitudes
made studies of influences impossible, we would hardly be able to

\Y
speak of Hume's influence on Kant or of Schopenhauer's influence on
Nietzsche.
The'rest of Mayo's study mentions Bacon a few more times and
never in an Epicurean context (e.g., p. 33» 110, 128, 1^0, 170).

X .
But what is more important for us, it never mentions Lucretius. *
This curious omission seems to indicate that Mayo, like many
other critics, tends to see Lucretius as a mere plagiarist of
Epicurus and consequently not worthy of any consideration. The
previous chapter of this study has proven, I hope convincingly,
how mistaken this view is.

f
Charles T. Harrison, in "Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle and the Ancient
\
Atomists," tries to remedy the inaccuracies exemplified by Mayo
by showing how Bacon was the first in England to appreciate the.
findings of the Greek atomists. He complains of the fact that "The
striking anomaly in the attacks on the influence of the Atomists
is that they took no cognizance of Bacon" and that "Bacon has
been, accorded very modest treatment in histories of atomism"(p. 192).
H a r r is o n in fact believes that I'it is with Bacon that the influence
of the.ancient Atomists effectively enters English thought"(p. 192).

0
He finds J several instances where the thought of Epicurus is paralleled /
Z' J
by that of- Bacon, and these instances are not c o n & n e d to atomism
alone. However, the merit of his study is primarily that of having
5k
shown how Bacon echoes Lucretius qua Lucretius, and not Lucretius
qua Epicurus,
Nevertheless Harrison adds the comment that "although he N
j^BaconJ understood sufficiently well the relation-'of Lucretius
to Democritus, his personal enthusiasm for Democritus led him
sometimes to ascribe to Democritus opinions which he found only
in Lucretius"(p. I 98). Harrison ascribes Bacon's apparent
preference fpr Democritus to "personal enthusiasm," although,
as we shall see later, other more cogent reasons also help to
account for it. He adds that "Bacon's reflections on death,
superstition, and love are so like in spirit to Lucretiue's that
one.would suspect’that Bacon saturated himself with the humane as
well as with £he naturalistic portions of the poem" (p. 199?.
Harrison then, concludes the section on Bacon by affirming that
iln the seventeenth century no other Englishman who readuLucretius's
poem was "as fully sympathetic as Bacon" (p, 200).
However, Harrison, in spite of his greater sensitivity to the
intellectual and emotional similarities between Lucretius an<d Bacon,
fails to see that Bacon Was not a mere admirer of and sympathiser
with Lucretius but probably the only thinker in his time who
understood the riost Obscure feature of Lucretius' atomism, namely
his notion of force or Eros. Harrison'says that Bacon "shows the

Q
extent to which atomism had seised upon his imagination when, in
the treatise De Prlncipiis atque Originlbus. he translates the
whole myth of Cupid and CoeiuurlntP terms of atoms and void" (p.196).
But he, unfortunately, calls' "Imagination" ^That, in reality, is ^
deep understanding. Bacon's allegory in De Principils marks, in
V
—
. & ■ 55
fact, the first attempt in the history of Lucretian scholarship
to come to grips in a scientific way (and not in a poetical way,

/
like Spenser in his Faerie Queene) with the concept of Venus and
^ /
Eros in De Rerum Natura. z
A 0
The series of articles by Magalhaes-Vilhen? is mainly concerned
s/ • /
with Aristotelian and Platonic echoes in the work of Bacon. It
also gives the atomism of Bacon large consideration and shows a
great partiality to the differences tejtween Democritus1 and Epicurus'
systems. However, Lucretius here seems to be " persona non grata" :
Madame Magalhaes-Vilhena's views on the relationship between
Lucretius and Bacon are in complete disagreement with those
expressed by'C. T. Harrison. 9/£e says that "Bacc/n, bien que le-
mentionnant, quelquefois, ne stable pas s'Stre attachA particuliSrement

*
k LucrSce— cet 'insanus Lucretius' si decrle, aprSs tant d'autres,
par Pomponazzi, que Bacon connaissalt bien" (Revue philosophique
de la France et de l'etranger, 152 (1962), p. 28). She adds that
"la raison— si l'on, peut parler d'une raison— en est simple:
'LucrSce— dit Bacon— n'a fait que revfitir du langage poetique le
systdme' de Democrite"(Ibld.) In quoting this statement of Bacon,
she refers the reader to the Riaux translation of the De Princlpils
atque Originlbus (vol. II, p. 45^). Tt is certainly brutf that,

• ~ r -4
/
wheneverhe can, Bacon avoids mentioning the name of Lucrative,
for reasons which shall be examined later. However, the statement
on Lucretius that Madame Magalhaes-Vilhena attributes to Bjacon is
nowhere to be found in De Principiis^-so that her views regarding
the relationship between Lucretius and Bacon -rest„ completely
unsupported. However, e v e n B a c o n had expressed su.î ah opinion
56
* 1
of Lucretius, the demonstrably great impact of his philosophy on
B a c o n s thought more than disproves such a^ theory. >
Becausb of the sporadic appearance of Lucretius in Bacon's
work, it is understandable and even, perhaps, excusable that his
influence on Bacon should have escaped most critics' notice. It
would be absurd, however, for anyone to deny Bacoi^js atomism, yet

f*' ^
such is the case with Bobert Leslie Ellis, who with James Spedding
and Douglas Denon Heath collected and edited what has long been
regarded as the*definit?lve edition of Bacon's works. In fact,f
in his preface to the Philosophical-Works of Bacon Ellis says:
"It has sometimes, I believe, been supposed that Bacon had adopted
the atomic theory of Democritus. This however is by no means true. n6
A benevolent reader might want to interpret this statement as
meaning that^thâtomigmof-BacQn was not that o f Democritus but
rather that of Epicurus o f Lucretius, but this generous gesture on
the part of the reader Would be frustrated by Ellis, who adds that
Bacon "did not adopt the peculiar opinions of Democritus and his
followers"; in short, that "Bacbn~was~not an atomist" (pp. 96-97).
How does Ellis, explain, then, the numerous references to Democritus
and Bacon's obvious admiration for the Greek philosopher (VIII, 83)?
Ellis believes^that Bacon "may, perhaps, have been more or less
influenced by a wish to find^ in antiquity something with which the
doctrines he condemned [sc. those of the Peripatetics^ might be
contrasted" (p. 95). He adds to this unconvincing or at least
unsubstantiated hypothesis the statement that "to Bacon- all sound ^
philosophy seemed to be included in What we now call the natural /

-o K /
sciences; and with this view he was naturally led to prefer.the
atomic doctrine of Democritus to any metaphysical speculation11
96). RU-is-1-obviously undocumented conclusions all seem to
stem\from a passage in the Novum Organ tun in vhich Bacon "rejects

\ C *
altogether the notion of a vacuum and that of the unchangeableness
- of matter" (p. 96). The passage to which Ellis refers is the one
where Bacon says, "Nor shall we thus be led to the doctrine of the
atoms, which implies the hypothesis of a vacuum and that of the

*■ /
/
unchangeableness of matter (both false assumptions); we shall be
j
led only to real particles, such as really exist" (VIII, 177).
However, from this statement it is evideht that what Bacon objected
to wa6 not atomi6m in general^mt simply the Motions of' vacuum and
of the "unchangeableness of matter." As far as the notion of
vacuum is concerned, Bacon makes it very clear in several places
not only tijiat his criticism of Democritus is limited to the vacuum
theory, but that it was a particular notion of vacuum that Bacon

i * ■—
~~objected_i&t namely that of an infinite vacuum. He says, in fact,
in'Descriptio Globi Intellectualis. that "it is on^. thing to deny
a vacuum absolutely, another to-deny a collective vacuum. For the
^rFaso')^nimTh"mayH3e--ar4vanced^Jui_âvour of a Vacuum interspersed,
Whereby bodies are relaxed- and opened, are far stronger than those
on which the assertion of a collective vacuum, that is, a vacuum

y •
extending over great spaces, is supported" (X, 426). He also 6ays
in defence of Leucippus and Democritus that these "two philosophers
... in admitting an interspersed vacuum, do in fact deny a

I '
collective *me" (X,4261Ih Cogitationes de Natura Rerum, -in order
to account for the contraction and condensation of bodies and for
their expansion and dilation, he admits the existence of a vaCui
58 '
He in fact conies to the conclusion/that contraction Must take'place

/ P*
"by some natural (whatever that may be) condensation and rarefaction
• • » * ___
*. of bodies" (X, 289f), ’’which supposes a vacuum" (X, 290). .JTKlir
/ 4 /
vacuum is, however, as he said before, an interspersed Wne, that
is, restricted within bounds and limited 'by matter, and not a
/ /
A* r
collective Jone. This development of Bacon's atomism is related to
( that thedry the dense and the rare, heat and cold,-' which he
/ > * * ' *4
adopted late in«his life and which appears in Historia Vitae et
Kort&s‘ (1623) and in Sylva &ylvarum^(1627).
As for that part ofVthe passage stating-that should abandon

\’ *
the atoms so that we may "lie-Led only to real particles, such.as .
really exist," it is clear .that Bacon had very, copfused ideas ~
concerning the atomic theory as developed by Democritus,. ^ It seems
to me, in fact, that here B^ c o n V s quibbling with terms; whether
one calls the beginnings 6f thingifc "atOlns,, or "particles" makes no
real difference in terms Of an acceptance of a theoretical philosophy
such as Democritus’ atomism. Bacon may be unsatisfied with the
details of the atomistic theory and With some of the attributes of
the attom, but the fact remains that he keeps his partiality to what
Ellis calls the "ultimate particles," a t»erm which, by the way,
reminds one of Lucretius* term "corpuscula\rerum," namely the atoms.
There is, nevertheless, a stage in Bacon's philosophy in which,
Democritus- and Leucippus are partially eclipsed in his mind, not
because he has rejected atomism but rather because* he found them
guilty of a certain narrowness of mind. In the flov^m Orgaimm.
the very work Which Ellis used to deny Bacon's atomism, Bacon says:
\ "
,Contemplations of nature and of .bodies in their simple
■ '
.
’!i
V - “ ? ..
' ' s • '
form break up and distract the understanding,while
contemplations oj nature and bodies,in 'thbir composition
and configuration overpower and dissolve the understanding
a distinction; well seen in the school of Iducippus and
, Democr.itus as‘ compared With the other philosophies; For
that schobl is so buried with 'the particles that it
hardly'attends to, the structure;-while the'others are
so lost* in admiratdbn of the^ structure that they do not
penetrate to the simplicity of matter. These kinds of-
contemplation should therefore be alternated and taken
- by turns; that so the understanding may be rendered at
once penetrating and comprehensive, and the inconveniences
above mentioned, with the idols that proceed from them,
may be avoided (VIII, 85-6).
Bacon's objections to atomism, then, are mainly directed to

v
the stress placed by the atomists on the Concept of the atom,
rather than on the atoms- themselves. We should keep in mind,

Y
hermore, that the Novup Organum is a work concerned principally
witt methods'of scientific investigation-and only to a limited •'

V
extent with the actual objects of research. It is in the light
of this information, then, that ‘Bacon's statements on atomism
acquire a more realistic perspective and at the same time
familiarize us with the notion.of atomic composition and structure,
thefunderstanding of which necessitates the presence of a binding
force, which we shall meet in the guise of Eros.
Paolo Rossi, by contrast* in Francis Bacon: From Magic to
Science.f sharply contradicts Ellis' view; in fact, he affirms the
atomism of Bacon. Nevertheless he complains that he "cannot
ignore the contradiction of Baton's insistence on the 'inevitability
of accepting atomism in the~De Pf^ncipiis. with his refutation of
Democritean atomism in the Novum Organum" (pp. 12i*-5). He does,
however, try to solve the contradiction by claiming’ that although'
"Bacon'8 reappraisal of Democritean philosophy is known and he
accepted most°fhe atomistic doctrines, , . ,-liis reservations were
motivated by his alchemical allegiances" (p. 1*0, He adds, moreover,
that Bacon was of the opinion that "Research should . . . be diverted
from the 'queta principia rerum' (paesive principles of substances)
to their appetites and inclinations" (pp. 14-15)•
This leads us to the best statement vl have found on the subject °
.of Bacon's atomism and consequently to the issue of Eros and the
atoms. Robert Hugh Kargon and Marco Maccio are responsible for
having seen Bacon's atomism as a philosophical and scientific
theory which developed, throughout his life, in antithetical
directions. Unfortunately, both Kargon and Maccio are inclined to
understand this antithesis in terms of development rather than in
terms of philosophical inconsistency.
In his book Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton. Kargon
divides Bacon's intellectual life into three periods: the first
-ends in the year 1603, the second ranges from 1603 to 1612 and the
i ”
third from 1612 to 1620. Kargon says that "In(the. earliest’
(Elizabethan) period of h-is, career, Bacon showed little, interest

* 52 *■ •
in the atomism of - Demofcritup, Epicurus, or'Lucretius," but that’
in the second period "(1603 to 1612, and perhaps later), Bpcon
showed his greatest sympathy ior_Jthe. atomic doctrine”. In thd

* «
Cogitationes de Rerum Natura (written before 1605), in the De

, 1 •
Principiis atque Originibus (written around, 1612), and in the hew '
^ * ' • ‘ - \ >*
‘Essaies added in 1612, Bacon made 'statements most favourable to
f 4
atomism. They lee^ve n o .doubt,. $h$t in this period he was, in some

* r
real hense, an adherent of that ancient'$»ilosophy" (p. 44).

• s * ' * •
Following this second stage, Bacon seefcs to have realized that
..-V -
61
Democritean and Epicurean atomism did not account for motion and
c
for force as an agent determining motion; therefore, "By the time

O ' I
of the publication of his Novum Organum (1620), he rejected both
metaphysical bases of atomism which he had previously accepted:
the existence of eternal, immutable atoms and the reality of thd
void" (p. 1*7). Kargon adds that "Atomism, basically an a priori
construction, and far removed from 'laboratory' practice, as it
were, was sacrificed ofor a new conception, close to that <?f-the

* » j
chemist, and to Bacon's mind, more closely related toNexperience"
(p.‘ 1*7). Kargon, however, does not seem to notice that what. Bacon
rejected was not atomism inîts totality, but, as noted above
(see p. 57)» "the immutable atom and the void" (pp. 1*7 , 1*9 ). He
stresses the fact that for the Bacon of these later years, "matter
i6 no longer’to be thought of in terms of atoms and void but rather

o
in terras of gross matter and a material activating spirit which
pervades all space" (p. 1+9).
’
Ahether Bacon, as Kargon implies, completely rejected atomism,
or whether he replaced the term "atoms" with the term "real particles'
(Bacon, Works. VIII, 177)» is,for our purposes, of secondary
importance. The essential is that the notion of "activating
spirit" acquires predominance in Bacon's thought.
* Maccio,is substantially in agreement with this view of Bacon's

'> * '
atomism.H^fh hiiTarticle "A proposito dell'atomismo nel Novum.
Organum di Bacone," he says that Bacon "rifiuta l'ipotesi degli
atomi Isoiati in spazi vuoti per assumere quella della particelle
connesse dagli s p i r i t i e mosse da questi. II rifiuto dell'atomismo

t , 1 #
tradizionale e\L'assunzione dellrattivit& degli spiriti mi paiono
62
.» 3
oj
strettaraente connessi con il problema della spiegazione del '
■ * •• " $ '•
movimento degli ^torni: ad essi $ tolto il principio di una
tendenza intrinseca al movimento ed esso & atjtribuito ad una
sostanza diversa, gll s p i r i t ! Even so, Maccio seems to be

ii> , '
more sensitive than Kargon to Bacon's development, for while
/■
Kargon tends to divide Bacon's thought rather sharply into
various stages, Maccio realizes that the seeds of the third stage,
%
with its theory of spirits, were already present in the preceding
atomistic period. Maccio feels that Bacon "deve aver sentito
intensamente in tutto l'arco della sua vita il problema del

r" 1”
movimento degli atom! 0 delle particelle pii piccole di corpi;
e deve essere stato proprio qviesto problema a fargli man mano

Vj’
abbandonare l'atdadsmo per avvicinarlo a concezioni dinamico-
vitalistiche" (p. 19^>;10
We can thus observk the following development in Bacon's
thought: a first stage in which atomism played no part; a
second stage witnessing a complete adoption of Democritean and
Epicurean atomism; a third stage showing a partial rejection of
traditional atomism and an interest in forces and in the origin
of atomic motion; plus a fourth stage where atoms are almost
completely abandoned and where the attention is focused mainly
on the theory of spirits as causes of motion. A fifth stage is,
unfortunately, lacking; and it is in this stage, that, to judge
by the manifest tendency of his evolving theories, Bacon would
have probably been able to synthesize his thought harmoniously
by bringing together atoms (thesis) and spirits (antithesis).
A synthesis of this kind would have allowed him to construct a
J
63
more complete and satisfying s|>|?ilosophic theory which would have
accounted for the two basic constituents of the universe, matter
and energy.
Nevertheless, the nature of dialectical profcessesis usually
such that we do not hav'e to„ wait for the" final synthesis in order
t
to have a certain amalgamation of thesi6 and antithesis. The
transition fpom thesis to antithesis is seldom abrupt, and its
gradual development from one to the other at a certain point
manifests elements of both, thus preparing the observer for the
synthesis to come.' Such is the case w;ith Bacon's work. Even if
we might feel the need for a subsequent combination of the second

N t
(atomistic) stage and the fourth (Vitalistic) stage, we can certainly
consider the third period as pre-synthetical. It is, in fact, at
this point in his life that Bacon 6ees the world as a whole where
atoms and forces are so well integrated that they are almost
c
identified the one with the other. The most significant work Of
what I. call the third stage i6 De^ Priacipi±s~~atqueÔriginibus
WeriTTiTTact^ as we shall see, the atom and its motive fordfc,
Cupid, are brought together so closely that they are almost
•identified one with the other. It is in this work that the reader
cannot escape the realization that, at this m a g e of hie thought
Bacon seems to be anticipating, even if allegorically, what
■centuries later will become the fundamental tenet of atomic physics,

C? r
namely the transformation of matter into energy.
In the .Cogltationes de Natura Rerun. Bafton already complains
of the fact that among ancient philosophers "the moving^ principles *
of things are treated for the.most phrt only in passage; so1that it*
> \ - - ‘V
64
passes all wonder to see how carelessly and loosely t&e greatest
and most useful thingôf all is inquired and handled" (X, 2 9 4 ).
He also complains that even Democritus, "acute as he is in
investigating the principles of bodies, when he comes to examine

<0
the principles of motion appears to be unequal to himself^, an& to
be unskilful; which likewise was the common fault of all the
philosophers" (X, 292).
In the chapter entitled "Cupid; or'the Atom" in his De

c"'
Sapientja Veterdm. Bacon is more lenient towards Democritus and
adfnits that although "the philosophy of the Greeks, ... in
inquiring the principles of motion, ... is negligent and
languid, . . . Democritus considered the matter more deeply; and
having fir^t given the atom some dimension and shape, attributed
dto it a single desire or primary motion simply and absolutely,1and »
a second by comparison" (XIII, 123-4). Ellis, in h iB preface to

u. -
De Prlncipiis atque Originibus. infers on the basis of-4?ftis statement
Of Bacon, that "The philosophy of Democritus appeared to Bacon to

o
be nearly in accordance with the hidden meaning of these fables
[sc. the fables of Cupid and CoeLOm]," but he adds that "we are not»
t. /
able to judge of his reasons for thinking so, as the only system
/
spoken of in detail is that 0/ Telesius" (V, 271).
*
The De Prlncipiis. in /act, seems to show a marked partiality,
to Democritus and Telesius, but since, according to Ellis, "Bacon's
own opinions arefcmiuch more clo/ely connected with those of Democritus
than with Telesius's, from Whom he derived only isolated doctrines"

c ’ t 1
(V, 2 8 8 ) r and since Democritus i6 here treated by Bacon in a rather
*
vague fashion, one is certainly justified in not being able to
65
' i
determine the extent of Democritus' influence on the Cupid allegory.
However, it is necessary at this point to realize that Bacon was

O
probably much more influenced by Lucretius than by Democritus.
Charles T. Harrison, in the article mentioned above (on p.
53), states that Bacon "uses Lucretius's words in describing

' i
Democritus's conception of the nature of the jatoms" (p. I98 ).
In the De Principjls atque Crjginlbus, Bacon rightly attributed
to Democritus the theory that atoms cannot be perceived by the
senses’ (cf. Kirk and Raven; fr. 555), hut he also attributed to
,the Greek philosopher the statement .to the effect that "they
resembldd neither fire nor anything else that could be felt or

» £
(touched" (X, 347). This observation is obviously a translation
of the following passage in book I of De Rerum Natura:
. . . nfeque sunt igni simulata, neque ulli

praeterea rei quae corpora mittere possit
sensibus, et nostros adjectu tangere tactus.
(I, 687-9) 4
Bacon then adds that according to Democritus, "in the generation
of things the first beginnings must needs have a dark and hidden
nature, lest something should rise up to resist and oppose them"
(X, 347). Again, this statement is'the translation of tê
following passage from Lucretius:
a t .prinordia gignundis in rebus oportet

^ naturam clandestinam caecamque adhibere,
emineatCne quid, quod contra pugnet et 9bstet.
. o (I, 778-8<
Nevertheless, in these two ii^tances Bacon i s ^ u i l t y only of
having expressed Democritus'/ ideas in Lucretian language. The

/ ^ '
attribution of one philosopher's words to ânother* becomes much5/
more serious, however, when Bacon makes Democritus state theories
that belonged only to Lucretius. One example, is, again, in De
Prlrfcipjis. where Bacon says that Democritus "should have attributed
to the atom a heterogeneous motion, as well as a heterogeneous body

o
and a heterogeneous virtue; whereas, out of the motions of the
larger bodies, he has selected two motions; namely, the descent of ^

\
heavy things and the ascent of light (which latter he explained n
as the effect of force or percussion of the heavier driving the

\
less heavy upwards), and ascribed,them as primitive mbtions to

i
J
the atym" (X, 3^8). We have already seen that the downward motion
of the atom was an Epicurean and Lucretian innovation, and that
the only motive principle mentioned by Democritus is the
the "whirl," a principle which, if Bacon had wanted, might have
accounted very well for what he calls "heterogeneous motion."

a
It seems as if Bacon wanted consciously to dismiss Democritus and
to adopt Lucretius without letting the reader discover his preference
In fact, if it were true that Bacon had a greater admiration for
Democritus than for Lucretius, why would he blame Democritus
instead of Lucretius for ideas that belonged in reality to Lucretius?
Ixr Tbougtrts^xm— therNature^bf Things. Bacon again mixes up Democritus
with Lucretius. He says that "It was ridiculous . . . to take those
small bodies that appear in the sun'S rays for these
are.like dust; where&s an atom, as Democritus!himself said, no

l *’ '
* O
one ever sa«r or can see" (X, p. 288). The passage to which he
is referring is in the second book of De Rerum Natura (II, lli»-122),

' t
where Lucretius compares the motion of the atoms to the disordered
movement of motes in a sunbeam. It is obvious that here Bacon

c
' has misunderstood Lucretius, not realizing thf(t what the Latin
poet had in mind was a mere analogy and in iio way a description
of the atoms themselves. However, what is even more surprising
• is that Lucretius is not mentioned, an^/Democritus is made the
scapegoat for the flaws of the atomistic system, when in reality
one would expect Bacon to support /emocritus, whom he admired, at
the expense of Lucretius, whom he, according to Magalhaes-Vilhena,
considered a mere plagiarist /f the ancient atomists. One is
forced, consequently, to drdw the conclusion that Bacon considered
any approbatory mention of Lucretius detrimental to his career,
knowing ,tn«t his age severely reprimanded Lucretius and the
Epicu/eans in general for their materialism and at.eism.

atîam. A'
A contemporary
of^Bacon,'Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake for having
admired and followed Lucretius1 teachings. Atomism per se
was no realy^hreat to the established religion, however, since
an atomic/universe still required the Jr

presence of a "primum
/ ' I
mobile/' or God; Democritus' system, consequently, could be
adopted and adapted to the current religious views. Lucretius,
ori the oVher hand, was more than a simple atomist; he was an
' * o
Epicurean, and ^thus-an-iconoclast, a pessimist, a pagan, , In
his essay "Of Atheisms," in fact, Bacon says that "Most of all,
that schools which is.most accused of Atheisme doth demonstrate

t r
Religion. That is, the Schoole of Leusippus, and Democritus,
and Epicurus. For it is a thousand -tintes more credible, that"
foure mutable Elements, and an immutable fifth essence, duely
and eternally placed neede no God: then that an Army of infinite

*
small portions or seeds unplaced, should have produced this order,
/
t '.
and beauty, without a divine Marshall" (XII, 338). Bacon here
shows the privileged position held by Democritus and Leucippus

/
and also tries to save Epicurus from the church's indictment.
Again, in the same essay, Bacon defends Epicurus' religious position
by saying that "his words are noble and divine: 'Nos Deos vulgi
negare profanura; 6ed vulgi opiniones Diis applicare" profanum.'
. *. . And although he had the confidence to deny the administration,
he had not the power to deny the nature" (XII, 133). This defence
of Epicurus is undoubtedly rather feeble, but it was probably
considered sufficient by Bacon, due to the fact that Epicurus had
at least done away with the ancient pagan religions beliefs.
Being thus deprived of divine.agency, Epicurus' universe greatly
resembled the universe of Democritus and therefore allowed for the
presence of some ruling God. Lucretius, on the other hand, had
committed the grave sin of Introducing Venus and Eros as prime

(
movers of the Universe. The presence of these most pagan gods
thus denied the Christian God his sway and consequently made
Christian theologians regard Lucretius as the most heretical of
the atomists.
*
In his Divina Commedia Dante had already made the distinction
between Democritus and the Epicureans by placing the former in
the Limbo, the next best tiling to Paradise (Inf. IV, 136), .and
consigning Epicurus, with all his followers, to the sixth circle
of the Inferno, where the heretics and all those who "l'anima
t
col corpo morta fanno" (make the body die with the soul) stifle ^
in their "avelll." Dante's judgement had not been fo^got^ten in
the seventeenth century. As Hhdzits says in Lucretius and his
/ 0 . . .
a
Influence, "a reaction against the tyrahny 6 t orthodox; beliefs
began to se,£ in with the growing spirit of rationalism, aru^ the
seventeenth century witnessed some of the r e s u l t s . s ^ i t e of

s ’ /
this, the seventeenth century bristled with hpstilities against
Lucretius" (p. 285); and if that century had come to terms with
dtomism, it certainly "could hot~and“~d±d-î©t -follow. Lucretius, the
atomist, in his denial of divine creation and of pr9vidence" (p^ 28?)

/
/
Such was the state of affairs when Bpfcon wrote, and few
works better than Be Prlncipiis atque Qîglnibus show the

✓
dangerous position in which he found7himself. Of all the myths
recorded and interpreted b y B a c o ^ i n De .Sapientia Veterum. it was

/
/ „ *
that of Cupid that appealed to- him mos.t and which, in his opinion,
deserved a place of honour in his De Prlncipiis. However,' his }

£ / 3
9
Cupid is far from being the principle of a doctrine "not differirig
J
in much from the philosophy which Democritus held" (X, 344).
$ - *
Rather he is the very principle that we met in De Rerum Nat-ura
in the guise of Eros. Although never before in the history of

i /
philosophy— ^wi,th the exception of Lucretius--have the atoms been
seen in i ^ a t i o n to Eros, or Venus,^ and although it would seem

/
obviot^ that Lucretius' Venuc/Eros-atoms combination had atrongly
influenced Bacon, Lucretius' name never appears either in the
/Cupid section of De Prlncipiis or in the abridged version of the
same section in De Sapientia Veterum. Although Lucretius' presence
is felt throughout the two sections, it is never acknowledged.
The Cupid described by Bacon is an amalgamation of several
Cupids, as they are^represented by different ancient philosophers

%
and poets. His attributes are his everlasting youth, his blindness,
his nakedness, his wings and his arrows (X, 343). In De Prlncipiis
Bacon says of Cupid that "his principal and peculiar power is
exercised in uniting bodies" (X, 343) and, in De Sapientia. that
Eros is "the appetite or instinct of primal matter; or to speak

c;
more plainly, the natural motion of the atom, which is indeed the
original and unique force that constitutes .and, fashions all things
out of matter" (XIII, 122). ThuSj Cupid, for Bacon, is either a
force that unites bodies, some urge inherent to the bodies, themselves
or the motion resulting from either the power of the force or the
power of* the urge. T o ‘make a definition of Eros even more confused,
Bacon equates it with the atom itself; the title of the seventeenth
i
chapter in De Sapientia Veterum is, literally, "Cupid; or the Atom."
It is safe to conclude, then, that Bacon was not very clear as to
the real function and entity of Eros, and that his only purpose
in interpreting the allegory of Cupid was to show that among the
ancients there existed, eVen if in an embryonic form, an interest
in something which went beyond pure natter, and which accounted

«» ‘ i
for motion and the forces determining it. In both works on. Cupid
Bacon is voicing his dissatisfaction with the purely atomistic
universe of Democritus and seeking for greater insights into the
universe by sounding the validity of ancient myths. However, the
idea of combining atoms with Love can only have come from Lucretius,
whom Bacon, as we have seen, knew all too well. Furthermore, the
presence of Lucretius seems to make itself felt even in the
description and attributes of Eros himself.
Charles W. Lemmi, in his thesis "The Classic Deities in
Bacon"iiomments on four of the attributes of Bacon's Cupid—

\, o
\
L
/ i , •
71
^ ' *t^
his "individual reality, his age, his blindness, and his nakedness*1—
and thinks it "probable" that Lucretius suggested then. He explains
the similarities between Bacon's^^pid and Lucretius' atom in the
following way:
In attributing t0 the atom (symbolized by Cupid) individual

reality, Bacon is in part expressing his opposition to
the conception of potential natter; but he is also reiterating
Lucretius's bontention that the aton is not an arbitrary
portion of matter to be subdivided at pleasure. And
Lucretius's atom remains unchanged forever in the eternal
minuteness which,Bacon symbolizes by Cupid's eternal
* ' childhood. As for his comparing the blindness of Cupid
to the undiscriminating force of interatomic attraction,
it is perhaps significant that Lucretius applies the word
r blind to ^he atom, though in the sense of invisible, and
that~Bacon quotes the passage. Finally there, is the
I interpretation of Cupid's nakedness: the absence of
I ---- sensible physical qualities in the atom. Lucretius,
|\ ' ~ asserting this same absence of sensible qualities, says
V\ that ultimate matter is "nullo velata colore," "Orba •
\ colore," "spoliata colore." Now H, S. J. Munro, in his
translation of De Rerum Natura, renders these phrases ’
by "clothed with no color," "denuded of color," ana
"Stripped of color." May not the same expressions have
been suggested to Bacon? It will be noticed that he
applies the word velum to matter as defined by Ionian
physicists (p. 6 l X 11
Lemmi's observations, especially those concerning Cupid's

/
nakedness, show a certain penetration and a thorough reading of
LucretlUB; however, the account he glves-for^theôther thr e e ____
properties of Cupid is not as satisfying: the indivisibility,
of the atom is not a Lucretian invention but an essential
characteristic of the original atom of Democritus and Leucippus

A i
(Kirk and Raven, fr. 556)* so that it is not necessary to bring
in Lucretius in or&er to account for Cupid's "individual reality."
The same criticism applies to the parallel between Lucretius'
forever unchanging and eternally minute atom and Bacon's eternally
72
infant Cupid. Democritus, in fact, had already described the atom
as infinitely small (Kirk and Raven, fr. 555) and as producing
change and coming into being only in its compound, forms (Kirk and
, \
Raven, fr. 582). ' '' ’
1
As far as the blindnees^fûpid^nd_jiX-b hâtom is concerned,
Lemmi's remark is .almost correct. As we have discovered in the

_- —■" ~ ^ . .» * t
previous chapter, Lucretius' atom is often described as "caecus."
However, the fact that this adjective in -this'context, as Lemmi
justly observes, .means "invisible", and'not-"biihd'r-weakeps his'

• • ' ’ V - - I '<
argument ,* unless we suppose, tha.t Bacon him^glf read Lpcretlus' •

'* * ’V*
"caecus" a s meanihg "blind."* This is ..possible', but his argument
* , 1 * A 'i • |/ » 1 «
* «,v / *
■would have been grfeatiy strengthened .had'.he taken not.e of the fact ■
,that while Lucretius often uses the epithet '"caucus" as' meaning
"invisible"’when describing the atom-itself, on the other hand,
he often uSes the same adjectiye as meaning-"biind" when describing
the* atoms' motion (II,’ 127^8, 129, 136). Lemmi's imprecision is

------ t
, probably due to the fact that h6 considered Bacon's Cupid a6*being
’only a symbol for the atom, as evidenoed in the first lines of the •
passage just quoted. He forgets; however, that'for Bacon, Cupid •
"does not only re'present the atom, but also "the natural motion of1
the atom" (XIII, 122<). It is thus that the epithet "caecus." in
a context of atomic motion, can rightly be translated, as "blind."
Lemmi's remarks,nevertheless, retain their importance and, qualified
by my comments, c6nflxo7i^w-TPre*aa«e~d^»^lctly^Lxicreiian elements
in'the atomic theories of Bacon.
L alluded'previously to the fact that Bacon'^s notion of Eros

"' *‘
is rather ambiguous, owing to his.incapacity to determine Whether
Eros-tfi^tEeâtom itself, or its moving force. I attributed *
* »
this ambiguity to confusion and lack of clarity on the part of
^ i
Bacon. I should point out, though, that fear may well have
played a more significant role in Bacon's nebulous account of

t
Cupid. Earlier in this chapter we have tried to explain Bacon's
V
reticent treatment of Lucretius by mentioning the paralysing
effects of religion on philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Now, most likely, we can notice this same negative
influence that affects Bacon's clarity of expression and forces
him to underplay th£ importance of Eros. Bacon is tempted into

, 1
claiming that Eros is the first cause and therefore an abstract
principle, a force, but realizing the heretical implications of
such a statement, he turns Cupid into a symbol for thie.atom, for . .
matter, thus allowing for the motive force of God to(account for
itjB. mcftion. Bacon in fact states that in ancient fables Cupid
" is introduced without a parent, that is to say'without a cause,"
and that of this primary matter and the proper virtue and action
«•
*
.thereof there can ba-jio cause in nature (for we always except God),
for nothing was bef-ore it" (X, 3 k k ) . It is clear, however; that

• ' * *
When Bacon deprives Cupid- of a cause.-he ha6 stopped thinking of
Cupid as atom. Be now sees h i m , ,to quote Bacon's own words, as

• »
"the original and unique force that, constitutes and fashiond all
things- out of matter" (XIII, 122). A .claim of this nature is the
.equivalent of saying that the real deidiurge, the true fashioner
and creator of the universe-is^gjôa, hot God, -an assertion which

t ’ * • ?' ■
:easily could have caused Bacon .to be"rightly .accused of-atheism*
or at least,of paganism. -With all probability it was the awareness
,.v ■t
/\
/
of hia precarious position*, .therefore, that kept Bacon from defining
too clearly the real role Of Eros and persuaded him to give Eros•
sometimes the characteristics pf the. atom itself and sometimes

>
.those of a "primum mobile.11 of a goyerning, force. His parenthetical
* ** „‘ *
Statements, "God always, excepted” in be-Saplentia Veterum (XIII, 122-3)
•** * * *
and "for we hiways except God" in De frincipiis atcjd'e •Originlbus
• ' : ^
(X, 344) can then be seen in their true light. Howard Br White,
* 11 - /
in Peace Among the Willows, realizes very clearly the danger of
BacOn’s predicament, and remarks of Bacon*6 treatment of Eros that

12 0 1 ->
'"The cautious Bacon, of course, excepted God." Bacon’s hesitation^
regarding the actual essence of Eros is shown again in the ambiguous-

/'
interpretation of Cupid's nakedness. A discussion,of Bacon's
interpretation of this "attribute," of Eros is pf fundamental
importance at this point,'since Bacon's preoccupations, here, are
not so much with a mere attribute but with the very' essence of Eros.
By interpreting Eros' nakednesh, Bacon, in fact, is trying to decide
Whether the first principle of the universe is abstract or concrete.
Bacon says that the essence of Cupid is ambivalentpin fact,
the ancient myths themselves show Cupi<âs being a person and, at ,#
the same time, as being naked: "that the first matter has some
* t
foria.is demonstrated in the fable by making Cupid-a person. . . .
a _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___ .— -— -
But though Cupid is represented_J^_the-allegory a person, he
is ;ye£ naked. ‘jTherefore, next td those who make matter abstract,
they are most in error (though on the contrary side) who make it
clothed" (X, 353). Consequently, for Bacon, the first principle
is neither, something completely abstract (naked), like Elato's
Ideas, nor’something completely concrete ,(clothed), like Thales'
Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
' " 75
*N o
water, but something Half-clothed, or more precisely, to use hie
* , k
own termssomething existing and having a form like a person,
but having none of the material attributes or no material
consistency, that is, naked.
We can see, then, how Bacon is struggling to determine whether
his Eros is a 'completely abstract and spiritual principle dangerously
apt to be seen as displacing the Cht$stian God, or a wholly concrete
principle lacking any creative force. Opting for the former ^
definition of Cupid means being guilty of heresy, for, as^ he says

C '''
in hie Meditationes Sacrae;J "whatever does not depend upon God as
author and principle, by links and subordinate degrees, the same
will be instead of God, and a new principle and kind of usurping

» ' r
God" (XIV, 95). On the other hand, opting for the latter meansu
leaving inert matter and passive atoms dependent for their motion
on God, an altogether unempirical, unscientific mover, whom Bacon
“
had all his life tried to dismiss from his natural philosophy. Thus
Q0 Q i
weA now Bacon’s desire to account for the motion of the atoms leads
\
\
him to seek a motive force, which he found in the Venus-Eros of
Lucretius, but his desire to keep God in his position of hegemony
was just as urgent. Hence the ambiguity of his views in De
Principlls atque Originlbus. Nevertheless, in spite of Bacon’s
vague aid inconsistent treatment of the subject, his interpretation
of the Cupid myth is sufficiently transparent to make the Lucretian

. . ' - 7
* •
elements conspicuous. Bacon's use1'of Lucretia^terminology and
expressions, his frequent allusions to Lucretian passages, the
forceful reintroduction, in an atomip context/, of a concept of

I
force which Democritus had vaguely imagined / *"Epicurus altogether
knd X
* ' 76
dismissed, and the striking similarities between the role of Bacon's
Cupid and that of Lucretius'• Venus-Eros principle, show how close
Bacon was to Lucretius.
Yet it is not surprising that so little should have been
said concerning the prese^yje of Lucretius in De Princlpiis,
especially in the context of a philosophy of force. Ey now the
reason should be obvious: . in order to see tha'atomlc Cupid of
Bacon as a development‘or version of the atomic Eros of Lucretius,
one must accept the connection between atoms and Eros in Lucretius
himself, a connection which has been consistently overlooked by
Lucretian scholars. Moreover, the ofter^-mentioned tendency to

j '
regard Lucretius as a me¥e plagiarist of Epicurus and Democritus
has blinded critics to the impact/ of Lucretius' individual and
original thought on Bacon's philosophy, just as believing, with

13
Blake, that Bacon is "only Epicurus over again" ^ has led many a
critic to see Bacon as a writer of moralistic essays and founder
of scientific method, but of little significance for the development'
of modern atomic theory.
It is for these reasons, therefore, that so much time has
bedn spent in this discussion on Lucretius and his "Eros principle,"

O ' -x
and on Bacon's critics; this work,in fact, aims not only at an
analysis of the relation ;between Lucretius and Eatjon, but also
at dispelling certain prejudices which have prevented most critics
from seeing, let alone properly acknowledging, Lbcretius' real
contributions to atomic theory and the naturje of the atomism that
Bacoi&f developed, out of them. '
.Nevertheless, this work should also be seen as a preliminary

«
O
&
'study to the history of the notion of force. A study of this kind
' * 111
has b4en attempted by Max Jammer in Concepts* of Force^ ^ where .
he follows the development of thi6 concept from the Predocratics
to modern times. However, Jammer's book, when dealing with"*

~
i ° *9
Presocratic physics, considers only Heraclitus' and Empedocles'
& i
contributions to a theory of dynamics and completely forgets
r ,
Democritus' "whirl" which, although being a mild attempt at a

!> ' •s
conce'ptualization of cosmic energy, acquires a certain importance
when seen in its relation to an atomic-universe, thus coining,
perhaps, closer to the modern theories of physics than the doctrines
of Heraclitus and Empedocles. Jainmer, moreover, omits all mention
.of Lupretius and Bacon, thus depriving the history of the concept
of force of two highly important contributors and innovators.

‘
Lucretius and,Bacon, in fact, were probably1 the only .

a ,
f
philosophers whb succeeded in discovering and explaining the real
- nature of energy without relinquishing the belief -in a fundamentally
4 material universe. They can neither be accused of excessive

» idealism like Anaxagoras5'or Hegel, nor of excessive materialism,
V
I
like Democritus or Hobbes, but should be numbered among those
all-too-rare minds which refuse to be labelled by histories of
philosophy as "materialists," "idealists" or any other narrow
appellation. They are, in-short, the great synthesizers.

a
V'., /
,/
/
/
/
'NOTES
Introduction ,
0 1 Pierre Boyance, Lucrece et l'epjcurisme (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1963), P. 2. Hereafter, unlesd otherwise
notbd, all references will be to this edition'.
p v
Marcus Fabius^'Quintilianus*, Institutiones Oratorlae. I, if, if
3 Ibid.. H I , 1, 3 .
jt "bilt as with children, when physicians try to administer

// *
rank wormwood, they first touch the rims about the cups with the
sweet yellow fluid of honey, that unthinking childhood be deluded

\
a s >far as the lips, and meanwhile that they may drink up the
* •
bitter juice of wormwood, and though beguiled be not betrayed, but
i
rather by such means be restored and regain health, so now do I:
since this ?d’octrin* commonly seems somewhat harsh to those 'who
have not used it, and the people shrink back from it, I have
.chosen to set forth my doctrine t’O you in sweet-speaking Pierian/
song, and as it were to touch it with the Muses* delicious honey,

r
if jSerchande in such a way I might engage your mind in my verses,
while you are le&rning to see ia what shape is framed the^whole
nature of thinglf^" Lucretius, De Rerum Natura. transl. W. H. D.

0
Rouse (Cambridge: .Harvard Univ. Press, 1966). Hereafter, unless
otherwise noted, all references will be to this edition.
1 i
5
i For ex., the one by Ettore Paratore, at, the end of his
• "" \
jj 1 »
^ It
1' ’
La letteratura latjna dell'et& imperials. commendable for its
t■ I
conciseness and comprehensiveness.
' Chapter I
I w? ,
\
1 G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratlc Philosophers
(Cambridge: University Press, 1969). Hereafter, unless otherwise
noted, all references will be to this edition.
2
Norman (Wentworth DeWitt, Epicurus and His Philosophy
(Minneapolis:/University of Minnesota Press, 195^).
^ Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, transl.
R. D. Hicks /(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950). Hereafter,
unless otherwise noted, all references will be to this.edition.
^ '‘so Ifar as it is needful to ensure our tranquillity and
happiness .'j
„ ^ Kaiu Marx, "The Difference Between the Democritean and
Epicurean/Philosophy of Nature," in Activity in Manx's Philosophy
ed. by Norman D. Livergood (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968).
Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all references will be to
this edition.
the whole of being [the universe} consists of bodies and
space
Trans, by Ri D. Hicks
"by mutual collisions and blow6
^ Cicerc, De Flnibus0Bonorum et Malorum, transl. H. Packham
%
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967). Hereafter, unless otherwise
noted, all references will be to this edition. ___

V
10 "keep oscillating in one place."
11
"that while the first bodies are being carried downwards
C
by their'own weight in a straight line through the void,, at times
quite uncertain and uncertain placSs, they swerve 3 little from
their bourse, just so much as you might call a change of motion.
For if they were not apt to incline, all would f&ll downwards
like raindrops through the profound'void, no collision would

r
take place and no b lo y would be caused amongst the first-beginnings:*
thus nature would never have produced anything."

0 ,
4 l »
12
"for -Epicurus says the atoms swerve without a causet—
yet this is the capital offence in a natural philosopher, to speak

t
of something taking place uncaused."
/ >
^ "ôthihg comes*out of that which 4.6 not."
Chapter II
1 ' ■ '/ *
Henri Bergson, The Philosophy of Poetry: The Genius of
Lucretius, transl. Wade Bapkin (New York: Philosophical Library,
1959). •' -
'■ o - • ’
2
v cf^ Antonio Traglia, Sulla formazione spirituals di Eucrezlo
^ ' > , 1
(Poma: Casa Editrice Gismonhi, 1948), chap. 1.
1v
W..R , ' ,
"In Lucretius . . . the use of particular terms chargee the
v ,
V / ^ . r «
* ^4
/
■V
81
work with a depressive and psychopathic obsession non-existent
in other Epicurean sources" (my translation). Luciano Perelli,
Lucrezio poeta dell'an&oscia (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1969).
Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all references will be to this
edition.
* , -
^ "the obsessive rhyt.hmic hammering And repetition of key
words" (my translation).
^ "Nay, throughout my-oown verses also you see manv elements
common to many words, although you must confess thrift ôVh verses
and words are different and consist of different elepenjLs: I do
not say that there are very few common letters running through
all, or that no two words, if compared, are made up of elements
all the same, but that commonly they are not all like all. So
in other things also, although\many firs^-beginnings are common
to many things, yet taken one with another they can make up a'
* ~N
whole quite unlike; so that different elements may rightly be
&
held to compose the human race and corn and luxuriant"Jteees."
6 Louis Roberts, A Concordance of Lucretius (Berkeley:
Agon, 1968).
7
Claf uJ ✓ V| i|0<V K O £ £>V of *
TT^Vrot ^ 01 T o k O V ' !<<><»•

rjv/ Tb V fVo^T i o /
* d <t l V 3 n A j T £ ^ .
TX Avi^KfjV/.
v!j).yo^W £ 7,^ T«tuTo( y£ < r^ d .l K oLToi To ^ L \J ’ dvi
ofd r at di.K.r|V Ko<i T,T c ^ ^ v * '

\ ' , ^ i >a J ‘ '
XatTot T^V ioc /oO T V CjX-V.
10 ''every generation of living things i6 conceived."
13- "if anyone decides to call the sea Neptune, and corn Ceres,
-.S
and to misapply the name of Bacchus rather than to, use the title
that is proper to that liquor, let us grapt him to dub the round
i
world Mother of the Gods, while he forbears in reality himself to
infect his mind with base superstition."
12 •
, "I invoke you, lofty Venus, you, the mother of our father"
Q \
(my translation).
. ^ J. M. Edmonds, Lyra Graeca (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. ftttess,
1958), fr. 1. ,
✓ /
"Calliope, man's repose and god's delight." Compare with
De Rer. Nat. I,’1.
^ E. Bignone, Storia della letteratura latlna (Firenze, 1945),
p: hh3. """ " ' ' /
* /
^
For "voluntas" and Venus ^de I, lj II, 172-3; for "voluptas"
/
and erotic pleasures see IV, 1057, 1075, 1081, 1085*. HI**, 1201,
1208; for "voluptas" and violent eaotions orC r a v i n g s , see II, 3;
II, 258; .III, 2 5 1 ; III, 1081; IV, 984.
17
Antonio Traglia, Sulla formazione spirltuale di Lucrezio
’.*
(Roma: Casa Editrice Gismondi, 1 % 8). '
Ifi «
Erich Neumann, Amor and Psyche, the Psychic Development of
the Feminine: a Commentary on the Tale of Apuleius (New York:
Harper and Row, 1962). Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all
references will be to this edition.
19
"Indeed, in the very time of possession, lovers* ardour
is storm-tossed, uncertain in its course, hesitating whaft first
to en4°y with eye or hand. They press closely the desired objept,
hurting the body, often they set their teeth in, the lips and crush
■ mouth on mouth: because the pleasure is not unmixed and there are
secret stings which urge them to hurt that very thing, whatever
it may be, from which those germs of frenzy grow."
, "Venus gives a light break to the suffering amidst their
love, and the soothing pleasure intermingled curbs back the bites.
21 ' *, i
J. M. Edmonds, op. oit.. fr. 2. 1
0
21a ^
Diogenes Laertius gives a list of several works written by
Epicurus among tfhich is a treatise entitled "On Love"* (X, 276).

.
%
However, nothing id known of it afod since Diogenes Laertius says
that the three letters he has quoted summarize the views expressed
by the works in the list, it seems safe to assume that Epicurufc*
views on love bad no bearing on his philosophy, and were of no

. J *
consequence, especially in terms.of'his physics.
t ■ ♦ *
2a * ' •’
."whence I say Is this will wrested from the fates by which
we proceed whither pleasure leads each."
8 /f
j i ,
2^ "Those parts*thus excited swep.1 with the seed, and there
is a desire to emit it towards that whither the dire craving tends."
P/i £ c
n Arthur Soh’dpenhauer, The .World as Will and Representation.
?
transl. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1966).
r
Hereafter, unless otherwise, rioted, all references will be to this
i.
edition.
2^ V. J. MCGill, Schopenhauer. Pessimist and Pagan (New York:
Brentanos, 1931). <
2&
John Masson, Lucretius. Epicurean ahd Poet (London: John
Murray, 1907). ' ^
27 "In the hymn to Venus . . . the urge to pleasure i8 the
means by which nature preserves the specif. In my opinion, there .
is a-clear analogy between this idea and the blind will-to-live of
Schopenhauer, which stirs,all nature and'which leads man to
illusive pleasure, when, in reality, nature only offers us the

' {
alternative between p a i n ,and boredom" (my translation);
‘ * . &
2fl
"Do but apply your scrutiny when the sun's light and his
r p t a
rays penetrale— and spread through a dark room: you will see many
minute specks mingling in many ways throughout the void in the -
light itself of the rays, and as it were in everlasting-conflict
struggling, fighting,,battling in troops without any pause, driven

1
about with frequent meetings and partings; so that you may conjecture
from this what it is for the first-beginnings of things to be ever
ôss$i about in the great void." • * . • «

\ -■’ ^ '
V, ■ • . \ . ■
v .■
. *. ' ° • . , ., fr
85
' £
^ MayotteBolla^k, "La chalne aimantine: LucrdCe et ses
modules grefcs," Revue des Etudes Latines. ifX (1963)* p. 165-85*
Hereafter, unless otherwf.se noted, all references will be to this
edition',
u
30 "Therefore besides vol,d and bodie's no third nature can

t "
*
be left self-existing in the sud of things;' neither one that can
1 ' * v*
a
ever at any time come within our senses, nor one that any man can
«
1 ,
grasp by the reasoning of the mind,"
31 -
"You will find that it is from the senses in the first
instance that the concept of truth has come, and that the senses
cannot be refuted. . , . What, moreover, must be held to be of
greater credit than the senses? Or shall reasoning, derived from

0
false sense, prevail against the$e senses, being itself wholly
derived from the senses?" »
32
Werner Heisenberg, The Physicist's Conception of Nature
(London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd., 1958), p. 13*

I
^ Andr6 Glde, L'immor^llste (Pari6: Gallimard, I 96O), p. 105.
Chapter III
1 * ' ' N
1 I960, p. 181-4; 19a , j . 25-38; 1962, p. 21-31; 1963, P.
245-54; 1965, p. 465-502. Magalhaes-Vilhena's Beries of articles
is number 727 in Houck's bibliography.. ^ <
2
Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all references will be
o ‘ '
to this edition.
^ Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all references will-be.
t
to this edition.
f ' I ,
^ Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all references will be
'Si)
to this edition. ' '
is
i.*'-
I should add, at^ this .point. that a careful perusal of the
I * . . y:, x .
Repertoire blblipgraphlque de l’
a frhilosophie, he Louvain, up to
the present dateV~.has not revealed the presence of any other work
on the topic of my thesis, except those already mentioned.
^ Francis Bacon,, The Works-of Francis Bacon, ed. Ellis*
Spedding, Heath (New Y o r k r H u r d and Houghton, 1864), I, 95.
Hereafter, unless otherwise n^>ted, all references will be to
this edition. * ,,
7
Paolo, Rossi, Francis Bacon: from Magic to Science, transl.
Sacha Rabinovitch (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968). Hereafter

i <•
unless otherwise noted, all references will be to this edition.

* ' • ■*>
/j ® Robert Hugh Kargon,- Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton

o > <
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 43. Hereafter, unless otherwise

)
noted', all references will be to this edition.
o *■
7 "refuses the hypothesis of atoms isolated in empty spaces
in order to adopt that o f -small particles connected and^moved by
spirits. His rejection of the traditional ktomisa and the adoption
of the spirits' activity seem to me to be intimately related to the
problem of the explanation of ther atoms' aotloal the atdas are

* °
deprived of an inherent tendency tq movement, which movement is
% • . 1
, * . 0,
o ' - - , ' * ,
“ !> ;
o
t /■, ’* ■ ■
attributed to a different substance, the spirits" (my translation,),
Marpo Maccio, "A proposito dell'atomismo nel Novum Orpanum di
Bacone," Rivista critlca dl storla della fllosofla, 17 (1962),
p. 191. Hereafter* unless otherwise noted, all references will
be to this edition.
*t
^ 10
"must have deeply felt throughout his whole life the
problem of the movement of the atoms or of the smallest particles
of the bodied; and exactly .this problem must have led Bacon to
abandon atomism in order to bring him nearer to dyhamic and
vitalistic conceptions" (my *translation). The italics are mine.
I have underlined the conjunction "or" in order to show how

\ Maccio, too, does not see much difference between atoms and
{
what Bacon calls in the Novum Organum. "real particles." '
11*J - ' ■
v Charles W. Lemmi, "The Classic Deities in Bacon; a Study
in Mythological Symbolism," Dies. John Hopkins 1933* Hereafter,-
unless otherwise noted, all references will be to this edition.

• I
12
Howard B. White, Peace Among the .Willows (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), p. 199.\ Heraajfter, unless otherwise
noted, all references will be to this>editibn.
^ William Blake, The Poetry> ahd Prose of William Blake. e<4.
David V./firdman (New York: Doubledjay, I97O)., p. 634*

/. . ■
- ^ Max Jammer, Concepts of Force: a Study in,the Foundations of

ft
Dynamics.(New York, Harper and Brothers, 1962),
BIBLIOGRAPHY
/
.
Aeschylus. Prometheus Boundt^ Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1932.6
Bacon, Francis. The Works of Francis Bacon. Ed. Ellis, Spedding,
' Heath. New York: Hurd and Houghton, l86k»
Bergson, Henri. The f’kilosophy of Poetry: The Genius of Lucretius.

o •
Transl. Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959*
Bignone, E. Storla della letteratura latina. Firenze, 19k5.
Blake, William. The Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Ed. David V
Erdman. New York: Doubleday, 1970.

<■* •
Bollack, Mayotte. "La chains almantine: Lucr&ce et ses-moddles
grecs." Revue deg Etudes Latlnes, i*! (1963), 165-&5.
Boyance, Pierre. Lucr&ce et 1 'epicurlsme. P a r i s : Presses

O o _ ^
Universitaires de France, 1963*
BreWer. D. S. "Lucretius and Bacon on Death." Notas and Queries,

, , a
200 (1955), I509-10. 4
%
Cicero. De Flnlbus Bonorum et Malorum. Transl. H. Rackham.
Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967*

0
DeWitt, Norman W. Epicurus and His Philosophy. Minneapolis:
Univ. Of Minnesota Press, 195k.
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Transl. R. D.
Hicks. CaffEridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950.

* '► ^
Eamonds, J. M. Lyra Graeca. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pressi, JL958.

* * '
Fleisthmann, tf.- B. Lucretius and English Literature 1680-1740.
Paris: A. G. Nizet, 196k.'
Fraisae, Simone. L►influence de Lucrdce en France au seizjiSme si&cle
Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1962. ’
vO
. '' 89
Gide, Andr6. L ’lmmoraliste.

Paris: Galllmarc(, i960.
*
s
Hadzits, G. D.. Lucretius and His Influence. New York: Longmans,
o
Green and Co, 1935* G
Harrison, Charles T. "Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle and the Ancient Atomists."
i i , t
Harvard Studies in Philology and Literature, 15 (1933), 191-218.
Heisenberg, Werner. The physicist*8 Conception of Nature. London:
Hutchinson and Co., 1958- Y
Hesiodus. Theogony. Oxforcy Clarendon Press, 1966.
Houck, J. Kemp. Francis Bacon 1926-66. London: Nether Press, 1968.
Jammer, Max. Concepts of Force. New York: Harper and' Brother.tr, 1962.
Kargon, Robert Hugh. Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton.
Oxford:vClarendon Press, 1966.
.Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E. The Presocratlc Philosophers.'.Cambridge:
Univ. Press, 1969* ' <\
Lemmi, Charles William. "The Classic Deities in Bacon; A Study-in
Mythological Sypbolism." &Lss. John Hopkins, 1933.

« *
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura., Transl. W. H. D. Rouse. Cambridge:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1966t
Maccio-, Marco. "A propositodell'atomismo nel NovUm Organum di
Ba«one." Rlvista crltlca di storia della filosofla. 17 (1962),
P. 191, ° ~
Magalhaes-Vilhena, V. de. "Bacon et 1 'antiquity."
Revue phllosophique
S
de la France et de l retranger« I960,, 181-8)*; 1961* 25-38;
1962, 21-^L; 1963, 21*5-5^1, 1965,\65-502. '
Marx, Karl. "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean

‘ 0 " * V
Philosophy, of NaturSj* -Activity in Marx*8 Philosophy. Ed. N. D.
Livergcfod. The Hague: Martlnus Nijhoff, 1968, p. 61-109.
j1
t
mmM
Masson, John. Lucretius, Epicurean and Po6t. London: John Murray, 190?
t? Mayo, Thomas F. Epicurus in England, 1650-1725. Dallas: Southwest
' Press, 193^• f

* i
McGill, V. J. Schopenhauer,, Pessimist and Pagan. New York:
Brenbano's, 1931. J
Neumann, Erich. Amor and Psyche, the Psychic.Development of the
4 Feminine: a Commentary on the Tala-of Apulelus. New York:

Harper and Row, 1962. ^
Perelli, Luciano. Lucrezlo poeta dell’angoscia. Firenze: La Nuova
Italia, 1969. 4 .
Roberts, Louis. A Concordance of Lucretius. Berkeley; Agon, 1968.
Rossi, Paolo. Francis Bacon: From ‘ffagic to Science. Transl.,Sacha
Rabinovitch. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968.

/
Rossi, Paolo. "Per una bibliografia degli scrltti su Francesco
I , . 9 .
feacone (1800-1956)." Rivista crltica di storia della fllbsofia,
1957, 75-89. ‘
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The V/orid as Will and Representation.
Transl. E. F . ’J. Payne. New York: ‘Dover, 1966.
Sortais, G, La philosophic moderns depuls Bacon jusqu1^ Leibniz.,
Paris ^ 9 2 ^ . ^ 1
Trfeglia, Antonio. Sulla formazione jspirituale di L u c r e z l o . Roma:
Casa Editrice Gismondi, 19^8. __ A

* *
White, Howard B. Peace Among the Willows. The Hague: Martinus
i Nijhoff, 1968. >
ty

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LUCRETIUS AND BACON

EROS AND THE ATOMS

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate

Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of Master of

Montreal - Canada August, 1973

! Bacon's atomism is usually seen as a mere repetition of

(8reek atomism, marking the beginning of the modern scientific age, -

method could hardly avoid taking. Consequently little attention

on account of the concept of force which it contains, goes beyohd

Democritean and Epicurean physics'. This concept appears in Bacon's

De Principiis atque Originibus symbolized by Cupid, and brings

Bacon much closer to the atomism of Lucretius than to that of the

Greek philosophers. Lucretius' universe, in fact, is more than a

mere conglomeration of atoms: it is a domain ruled ,by the power of

of the two, philosophers can be made manifest only if Lucretius'

Venus is seen in her relation to the atoms.

Souvent on regarde l'atomisme de Bacon'comme une repetitiqtf

de l'atomleme grec qui marque le debut de l'&ge moderne sclentifique,

et comme une pOBltjLon philosophique que le fondateur de la methods

inductive ne pouvait pas eviter. Par consequent, on s'est occupe

tenant compte de l'idee de force qu'il contient, va plus loin que

la physique de Democrite et d'Epicure. Cette idee eet syrabolis6e

|>ar Cupidon dans- le De Principiis atque Originlbus. et rapproche

Bacon i. l'atomleme de Lucrdce plus qu'A celui dee philosophes

grecs. En effet, l'univers de Lucrlce est plus qu'une simple

conglomeration d'atomes: i! est un domains gouverne par Venus

et Eros. Pourtant, les similarites entre les syst^mes atomiques

desjieux ^philosophes peuvent se manifeeter seulement si la V6nus

. de Lucrdce est reconnue danp sa.,relation avec les atomes.

to earlier philosophies an^l in ter ins of his influence on later

writers, hah been extensively employed; "this is to refer to him as

to the most "complete" or at least most "legible" embodiment of 1

atomism; "complete" on 'account of the fragmentary nature of the pre-

Socratic atomists and'of the works of Epicurus himself, "legible"

o’n account of the stylistic and poetic merits of De Rerum Katura,

accessible than lie Greek models. HoWever, this privileged

detrimental consequences. The pleasant.shortcut to atomism offered

almost solely as a systematic and lyrical exposition of the thought

of Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus, in whose writings atomism

suffered from the dryness common to most philosophic treatises,

an attitude which has led to a general lack of responsiveness to

the originality of Lucretius’ thought. In fact, even though many

and poetic skill of Lucretius, few have concerned themselves with

the extent to which his philosophy deviated from its Democritean

Archetype and from its closer Epicurean^model. Pierre Boyanc6, -

the author of Lucrdce et 1 1epicurisms, best illustrates the former

group of scholars. He recognizes that Lucretius has.not limited

himself to following faithfully the philosophy of Epicurus, rather,

"il I'a repens6e avaQ^profondeur, en l'ordonnant dans le cadre de

de persuasion, de seduction, de conquSte splrituelle."^" However,

the Epicurean universe. After saying, "S'il y a une originalite

and that "L*originalite la plu6 profonde de LucrAce est . . .

This position, maintained, as I have said, by most Lucretlan

of Lucretius • work and is best epitomis^i by Quintilian, io places

Lucretius among those writers who "praecepta sapientiae versibus

' mainly that of having made Epicurus' doctrines more acceptable

by translating them into verse.^ Quintilian here quotes part of

influential -in leading critics to view Lucretius as a mere versifier

and sweetener of Epicurean philoedphy:

Sed veluti pueris absinthia taetra medentes

way to^an understanding of Lucretius* original, thought, is Luciano

Perelli, who in his book. Lucrefeio poeta .dell 'angoscia. a recently